Had she noticed who was driving the vehicle?
It had been a man, that’s all Julie could say.
Without intending to, Anthea parked in the main street and went into the supermarket. She chose the most expensive coffee, ingredients for a tasty sauce to serve with fresh pasta, a bottle of chardonnay. Then she had to drop them at her flat before she could return to work, all the while mulling over Julie’s story.
Pulling up outside the white fence, the lavender and rose bushes, Anthea surprised herself by feeling what amounted to a physical longing for the hard anonymity of a metropolitan police station, where hierarchies were clear. Perhaps she should have stayed on and done her detective training. But she’d wanted to work; she’d wanted to be out there doing something.
If she’d stayed in Melbourne, Anthea told herself, the breach with Graeme would not have occurred. But she couldn’t go back now. She couldn’t go back to the way things had been. And she knew she was simplifying matters too. It had been partly as a result of Graeme’s teasing that she hadn’t continued with her training. Her marks had been borderline, certainly not brilliant. She’d spent every free minute with Graeme, and the limits had been mostly ones he’d fixed - limits set by his work and what he liked to call his ‘other commitments’.
Anthea asked herself what career would have found favour with her boyfriend. A profession? Not architecture, since that was his field. A lesser profession then - teaching, perhaps, or accountancy. She admitted something else about her departure from Melbourne; she had wanted financial independence.
But she hadn’t realised that living in a small community would feel like drinking water that was always tepid, never hot or cold.
What was it she really wanted? Drama she could fling herself into, as others flung themselves into the surf? Was that what Julie wanted too? Was that what she sometimes saw in Julie’s eyes?
Anthea got out, locked her car and stood staring at the park and park bench, and, beyond them, the bay and shipping channel.
At least she could wish for some absolute division between work and recreation, and that each should have a taste that was distinct. Anthea felt she would have preferred harshness or censure, rather than being left to find her own line through to what was important.
ELEVEN
Anthea found Chris sitting at his desk, which was covered with notes on bits of paper in his small, backsloping handwriting.
He looked up, flushed with excitement.
‘Margaret Benton was definitely here in Queenscliff. She and her husband rented a cabin at the van park.’
While Anthea had been with Julie, Chris had started at the top end of the main street and called in at each of the businesses and shops. Most of the shopkeepers thought he was back to ask about the camel, and a few teased him for not having found it yet.
‘Maybe the little fella’s run away to the circus,’ one suggested, and another, ‘Maybe those greenies’ve got him, on account of being feral and a pest.’
Chris had laughed and replied, ‘That’s in the Northern Territory, you oaf. What you’ve got to worry about is cats like Snowy here.’
When he’d stopped by the caravan park, he’d found the office unlocked, but empty.
Ben came when he rang the bell, looking sullen and wary.
‘Mum and Dad’ve gone into Geelong. I’ve got the day off cos I’m sick.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, Ben. This’ll only take a moment. I just want you to tell me where you’ve seen this woman before.’
‘I never - ’ Ben began, turning white like Ian Lawrey had.
‘It was here, wasn’t it? When was Margaret Benton here?’
Ben’s face was blank, the practised blank of adolescents. Chris waited for what might be going on beneath this.
He said finally, ‘We were full up all of January.’
‘I can appreciate that. And I can understand how faces must start to look alike.’ He didn’t add, especially the faces of middle-aged women. ‘But you do recognise this lady, don’t you?’
‘I might.’
‘Could you tell your father I’d like to ask him a few questions? I’ll be back in an hour.’
Anthea told Chris her news. Chris rang Swan Hill police station again. Margaret’s husband, Jack Benton, had been questioned about the coat, but claimed to have no idea how it had got into the sandhills. He said his wife had left him for another man.
‘What do you think?’ Chris asked his assistant.
Anthea said, ‘If the coat’s been lying there since January, why didn’t someone pick it up?’
‘Maybe it was buried. Maybe kids or a dog dug it up.’
Chris was thinking that he should have looked for signs of this.
He returned to the caravan park just as Penny and Alex McIntyre were getting out of their car. From the look of them, their trip to Geelong had not gone well. Penny’s make-up was smudged. Alex was scowling and his lips were pulled in, as though to stop himself from saying something he’d regret.
Chris hitched up his uniform and approached them, holding out his hand.
‘Alex. Penny. Just a few questions. Shouldn’t take long.’
When Penny took his hand, Chris felt the tension in it, how it was hot and dry. ‘I have to see about lunch,’ she said.
Alex watched his wife’s departing back, still frowning, then led the way to the office. He pulled two chairs out from the wall and let himself fall onto one.
Chris reached in his pocket for a photograph. Instead of looking at it, Alex went round behind the counter and opened his bar fridge.
‘A beer, Blackie? Come on, mate. You can’t stay on duty all the frigging time.’
‘Okay then, a small one. Thanks.’
Alex smiled a private smile, drank deeply, then wiped his face with a tissue.
‘That’s better.’
His big frame relaxed as though someone pulled a peg that was holding complicated scaffolding in place. He wiped his face again, then aimed the tissue at a small metal bin, moving slowly to take the photo Chris held out.
Alex didn’t speak for a long time. When he did, his voice was tired and full of what seemed to Chris like old and useless anger.
‘The bloke gave me a bad feeling from the moment they pulled in. You know how it is sometimes. There’ll be a hundred, and one will make your skin crawl.’
Chris nodded. He’d felt that often enough, going into a pub on a hot summer night, when one word out of place would start a fight. Almost straight away, he could pick the man who’d say that word, loudly, in his presence and in defiance of it. It was his job to stop that happening. It was Alex’s job too. People wouldn’t return to a van park where fights broke out, not people with young families, and fishermen who just wanted to sit on the beach with a rod and reel and cook their catch in the twilight.
‘Tell me about it.’
‘The barbecues were full. This one’s old man claimed he got there first.’
Alex lifted his chin and Chris understood that, rather than seeing Margaret Benton, it was her husband’s outline that was before his eyes.
‘Another camper claimed he got there first as well. He had friends to back him up, but he was willing to accept my ruling on the matter. It could have come to blows, would have, I think, except that Jack - oh, yes, I remember his name - took stock of his opponents and decided he could take on one man, but not four.’
‘Benton was drunk?’
‘Not so you’d notice. A nasty piece of work drunk or sober, and looking for a fight.’ Alex indicated the photograph again. ‘This lady tried to hose him down, but I don’t think she expected to succeed.’
‘What did you make of her?’
‘I never thought about it, to be honest. Penny might have more to say on that score. She saw it on the news, that she’d gone missing.’
And never phoned to tell me, Chris thought but didn’t say.
‘How long were they here?’
‘Less than the week they’d booke
d for. I told Benton he’d have to leave.’
‘Could you dig out the registration details?’
‘Now?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
Chris sipped his beer while Alex took down a folder from a shelf behind the counter and began thumbing through it.
He found the page he was looking for, and Chris copied the information.
‘Was Ben around when the argument broke out over the barbecues?’
Alex nodded. ‘It was Ben who came running to tell me.’
They talked for a few more minutes. Chris thanked him for the beer and the information, and said he had to go.
TWELVE
A week of heavy rain washed Margaret Benton’s body out from a bank of the Murray River. She’d been buried less than a kilometre from where she’d lived in Swan Hill.
Chris realised he’d known that she was dead; he hadn’t had a moment’s doubt. From Anthea’s expression as she listened to the news, it seemed that she’d believed this too.
‘The body was right on the bank.’
‘What about ID?’
‘None on her. Identified from dental records.’
‘They’ll send somebody down here now,’ Chris said.
A river bank had disgorged a body. Chris replayed the scene in his mind, as though it was one he’d witnessed personally; not just any river, but the Murray in flood, the body spinning in the water, jostling those of sheep and luckless cattle, yet not rolling far. What if the dead woman’s remains had not been caught in branches, stopped by a fallen tree? What if Margaret Benton had gone on rolling, kilometre after kilometre? What if she had never been found at all?
That was, of course, what her killer must have hoped for.
Anthea showed Chris her computer screen. On it was a photograph of a good-looking middle-aged man, with wavy dark hair and thick lips.
‘It’s him.’
‘Good work.’ Chris pulled up a chair. The name under the photo was in a tiny point size. Anthea zoomed in and the man’s face went fuzzy.
‘Does he have a record?’
‘Stealing cars.’
‘Looks a bit old for that.’
‘Some men never grow up.’
Chris shot a glance at Anthea, but her eyes were firmly on the screen.
‘I’ll print this off, will I? It’s something to go round with.’
‘Good,’ Chris said again. ‘Print out the convictions too. I don’t suppose there’s a horse float among them?’
Anthea laughed and said, ‘No such luck.’
‘Don’t play silly buggers with me, Frank. Where’s your trailer?’
‘You know what, Blackie? You’ve turned into an aggressive little shit since you acquired that lass with the pretty arse. I might have to get my solicitor to remind you of my rights.’
Chris rubbed his eyes and shook his head to clear it. ‘Go ahead, Frank. But I’ll be round here every day until I get an answer, so you might as well co-operate and save yourself the trouble.’
The farmer scowled, then said gruffly, ‘My son’s got it.’
‘Jim?’
‘Some of us do have families, you know.’
‘What’s Jim doing with your clapped-out trailer?’
‘Moving a horse.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Well, I couldn’t say for certain, not to the nearest metre.’ Frank made an exaggerated show of checking his watch. ‘Somewhere between Lorne and Apollo Bay would be a rough estimate.’
‘I’ll need it back. Today.’
‘Don’t know about that. Mightn’t be possible.’
‘Tomorrow, or I’ll charge you with obstructing a police investigation.’
Chris knew Frank was laughing at him. But whether it was guilty laughter, or pleasure at having got the better of the local law enforcement, this he couldn’t say. He was annoyed with himself for over-reacting.
If the grapevine had done its usual work, Chris was sure Frank Erwin knew all about the Bentons’ stay at the McIntyre’s van park, and what had brought it to a premature end. The whole town would know that the murdered woman had been in Queenscliff last summer; they’d be watching with curiosity to see what happened next.
Chris told himself that he could chase Jim up, go back to Frank and find out what he was driving, get the rego details. He could ring the stations at Lorne and Apollo Bay and ask them to keep a look out. There couldn’t be that many horse trailers on the Ocean Road today. But he felt in his bones that it was too late.
He wasn’t surprised when he picked up the phone an hour later and there was Frank on the other end, a Frank much chastened and apologetic. He was terribly sorry, but there’d been an accident. His trailer had gone over the side of a cliff, around a nasty bend.
‘You know that really bad stretch just before you get to Wye River. And it’s blowing a gale down there today.’
‘So the trailer came loose. Where is it now?’
‘Over the side, like I said.’ Frank sounded aggrieved. ‘And thanks for asking after Jimmy. He wasn’t hurt, by the way.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
Chris had no authority to order any kind of salvage operation, and James Erwin would have made sure that pieces of the trailer were scattered far and wide. He began typing another report, outlining a connection between the missing camel and Margaret Benton, but stopped when he realised that he wasn’t even convincing himself. He knew that the trailer would remain at the bottom of whatever cliff it had conveniently fallen over, until it was washed away by the spectacular high tides that were famous along that stretch of coastline.
He put the half-written report aside and rang to ask about the lab results on the hairs. After being put on hold for what seemed like forever, he was told they’d once belonged to a palomino pony.
When Anthea came in, flushed from her door-to-door, Chris didn’t want to tell her about the debacle over the trailer, but he made himself get it over with.
Anthea listened in silence. When Chris had finished, she bit the inside of her cheek and frowned.
‘But if Frank knew he was innocent, why go to all that trouble?’
The same question had been in Chris’s mind too, as he pictured shards of wood floating out to sea.
‘Frank told me the hairs weren’t Riza’s. He was angry when I didn’t believe him.’
Anthea said, ‘Everyone’s speculating about who killed Margaret Benton. You should hear the theories.’
Chris put his head in his hands and muttered between them, ‘Spare me.’
The spaghetti sauce smelt good. Once Anthea had got over her surprise at asking Chris to share it, it seemed a lucky chance, a pleasant kind of omen, that she’d bought enough ingredients for two.
Anthea poured wine, glad she’d had the foresight to put a bottle in the fridge.
‘Cheers,’ she said, serving with a small show of ceremony, wondering if Chris would notice that she had two of everything - two good glasses, deep bowls for the fettuccini, salad plates, linen serviettes she’d only just unpacked.
Chris fell on his dinner and began shovelling it in.
He looked up at Anthea’s quizzical expression.
‘Sorry,’ he said, wiping his mouth. ‘I - it’s good.’
‘I’m glad you like it. And don’t be.’
They ate without speaking for a while, Anthea finding the silence restful rather than a gap needing to be filled. She reflected that Graeme would have expected her to entertain him - while she was cooking, while they were eating, and after the meal. She would have prepared jokes, amusing anecdotes about the town and its inhabitants. She would have rehearsed them, and been anxious that they should go down well. Suddenly, she missed Graeme dreadfully. It was impossible that they’d come to this lack of contact, this nothing.
Chris leant back in his chair. Anthea noticed that he’d hardly touched his wine. She refilled the carafe of water she’d put on the table and he drank some of that.
She was aware of ever
y move Chris made, aware for the first time of the masculine weight and heft of him, the growl his chair made as he scraped it back, sounds she was sure he scarcely heard himself.
They washed up together, Anthea absorbed by a new sensitivity towards her boss as a man. She felt certain that any change in her behaviour towards him would cause them both discomfort. Not that she intended to behave differently; but signals were given and received whether or not the exchange was intentional.
Chris was an odd mixture, which Anthea hadn’t come across before, of sensitivity and ignorance where women were concerned. She found herself revising her initial impression, which was that for her boss never to have married, or even to have had a long-term relationship - she suspected this was so, without really knowing - meant that there was something wrong with him. Weeks of having kept her ears open for gossip about past girlfriends had not netted her a single name.
Anthea stared intently, over the automatic movements of her fingers, at neutral or grey areas she had not previously thought it worth her while to contemplate.
She thought that Chris was too close to the townspeople, and that was why he felt inadequate and anxious now. He’d grown used to behaving like a mother hen, shepherding his flock and keeping them out of danger, when even fools knew that danger had a habit of rearing up and clobbering you, even in a boring country town.
After Chris had left, Anthea grabbed her torch, glad he hadn’t overstayed his welcome. She climbed the cliff path with a greedy sense of anticipation, as though the pleasures to be gained there - salt wind in her hair, calls of the night birds - answered a need as physical as hunger. She was getting to know the path, where bulbous tree roots rose to trip a person, with their look of nocturnal animals frozen in the act.
She recalled her loneliness, now that it was diminishing, in the first few weeks of what she’d thought of as her banishment. Nothing in the night had answered it; nothing human, or made by humans, such as a café or a bar where she might have found someone to have a drink with. She shrank from going into a pub alone here, being recognised and talked about.
Through a Camel's Eye Page 6