The Swan Island Connection

by Dorothy Johnston

  After brief introductions, Chris had gone to a straight-backed chair near the door. Avis was smoking again; perhaps she hadn’t stopped. Her black dress looked grey through the smoke. Chris wondered how many years it had been hanging in a wardrobe waiting, and felt ashamed at the thought, as though by criticising Bobby’s parents he was somehow being disloyal to the boy. When he was alive, Bobby hadn’t complained about them; they’d simply been obstacles to find his way around.

  Avis glared at both policemen before disappearing into the kitchen. Chris wondered where Sharon and the younger children were.

  Bobby’s father floundered over details and kept insisting that he’d had to be at work by seven, as though this fact absolved him from any knowledge of what had been going on in his house the night before. Sharon had cooked his breakfast. She liked to let the boys sleep as long as possible.

  ‘Seven in the morning,’ Phil repeated. ‘Got to bring home the bacon, don’t I?’

  ‘Where do you work, Mr McGilvrey?’

  Phil explained that at present it was a construction site on the far side of Corio.

  ‘That new housing estate, know it?’

  Shaw nodded to indicate that he did.

  ‘Been up there for six months now, but my work takes me all over.’

  Shaw’s expression hardened, but Phil seemed unaware of this. For once, Chris felt himself agreeing with the sergeant’s assessment. He knew Bobby’s father wasn’t seeking refuge from shock. He’d never been able to get close to having a decent conversation with Phil McGilvrey. Faced with accusations that he beat his son, Phil had angrily denied it, and Avis had backed him up.

  Phil claimed he was a sound sleeper and hadn’t heard Bobby coming home.

  Chris felt what remained of his ability to think shutting down at the sudden fear that this man had murdered his son.

  When Shaw asked about Max, Phil’s answer was that Bobby had turned up with Max one night, announced that the animal was his, and that he’d be responsible for the cost of feeding him.

  ‘He was a pest that dog, always barkin’, always causin’ trouble.’

  Phil knew that Max was being looked after by a friend of his son’s, but he claimed not to know the friend’s name, or anything about him. He returned, as though these were the important details, to what he’d had for breakfast. Sharon had cooked sausages and eggs and he’d eaten while she was getting the younger children up. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen ‘hide nor hair’ of Bobby. His eldest son came and went without regard for the rest of the family. When he got some money, he kept it to himself.

  ‘What money?’ Shaw asked.

  ‘He never said. He wouldn’t. Tight, he was.’

  ‘Who gave Bobby money?’

  Phil’s answer was a shrug.

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Once he come home wiv’ a twenny.’

  ‘Show you it, did he?’

  Phil looked sly. Chris wondered why Bobby would leave notes to be found; but perhaps his father had discovered the twenty dollars before the boy could secrete it away. Perhaps his father had taken it by force. Chris knew that beatings alone would not have made Bobby divulge the source of his income. It was possible that every now and then a note had been handed to his father as a sop, along with a convincing show of reluctance, and the philosophic acceptance of a blow or two.

  Chris felt disgust rise in his throat. He wondered if the sergeant was making a mental note, as he was, to look for Bobby’s hiding place.

  He felt like asking Phil why he’d had four children, but stopped himself in time.

  SEVEN

  Sharon McGilvrey cried quietly for her brother. The two younger boys had been fetched from school. Only afterwards did Chris learn that this job had been delegated to Sharon, that her mother had rung the bakery in Hesse Street and told her to get them. Shaw had instructed Chris to pick Anthea up on their way to the bakery, then return with Sharon to the house.

  Anthea held out her hand in comfort to the girl, and kept hold of it while Shaw asked when Bobby had come home the night before.

  ‘About nine,’ Sharon said.

  ‘When did he go out again?’

  ‘I — I don’t know.’

  ‘But you knew he’d gone out?’

  ‘I was asleep,’ Sharon said in a whisper.

  She admitted that Bobby sometimes left the house again after Mr Parkinson had walked him home, but he never told her where he went, and she’d never asked him.

  Chris, who was once more taking notes, looked up sharply at this denial. If Bobby had told anyone about his hiding place, it would have been his sister. He opened his mouth to ask a question, then shut it again. Shaw would only jump on him. His suspicions about Shaw’s lack of sympathy hardened all at once into dislike.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell your parents when your brother didn’t come home last night?’

  Sharon’s expression said: what difference would it have made?

  ‘You weren’t worried about him?’

  Of course she was, Chris thought, noting Anthea’s quick frown.

  ‘Did Bobby often stay out all night?’

  Sharon shook her head.

  ‘Answer the question. Yes or no.’

  ‘No! Bobby was usually — he went to school, see. He’d started back at school.’

  ‘But your brother could have been gone till two or three in the morning and you wouldn’t know.’

  ‘I have to get up early. And Bobby’s very quiet.’

  ‘You must have some idea what he was up to. Stealing, was it?’

  ‘Sir,’ Anthea said.

  ‘Constable Merritt? Stealing,’ Shaw repeated, before she had a chance to speak again.

  Chris wondered why Sharon should be the target of his sarcasm. Surely the sergeant realised that the only way to get the girl to talk was to win her trust, and that even with the best efforts that might not be possible.

  ‘My brother wasn’t stealing,’ Sharon said firmly and with dignity. ‘He did jobs for people.’

  ‘What kind of jobs?’

  ‘Messages.’

  Shaw smiled as though he’d achieved or proved something. Chris thought of Inspector Ferguson and how there wasn’t much to choose between this man and his superior.

  ‘What about your brothers? Surely they would have noticed when Bobby wasn’t there?’

  ‘They didn’t — they —’

  ‘Wouldn’t dob him in. I see. And meanwhile he’s lying in the railway yard with a dog lead round his throat.’

  ‘Sir.’ This time it was Chris. ‘Is that necessary?’

  ‘I’ll decide what’s necessary, constable.’

  Sharon began to shake. Anthea put an arm around her. Shaw’s phone rang and he turned away to answer it.

  Chris was sure that Sharon’s shock was genuine. If the sergeant thought she’d had anything to do with Bobby’s murder, or knew someone who did, then watching her now Chris put the idea firmly out of his mind. He caught Anthea’s eye and they exchanged a silent agreement that the best place for Sharon at that moment would probably be the bakery. Her parents would harass her if they left her at the house.

  Phil and Avis were arguing in the kitchen where they were supposed to be comforting their sons. They hadn’t asked to be present while Sharon was interviewed. Rodney and David, Bobby’s brothers, made a pair; it was as though they’d been born twins. They offered Sergeant Shaw blank stares.

  The news had been broken to them suddenly, and they’d not had time to take it in. Even the simple confirmation that they shared a room with Bobby seemed beyond them.

  When Shaw asked if Bobby had told them where he was going last night, they had no answer. Belatedly, they shook their heads.

  Shaw looked from one to the other. ‘What time did Bobby go out?’

  Avis was sitting with her back to the window, smoking, watching the police officers through narrowed eyes. Sunlight picked up dust on the shoulders of her mourning dress. Sharon sat between her brothers, with
an arm around each one.

  Shaw took David and Rodney through their morning routine. They confirmed that their father had left early, while their mother stayed in bed. Bobby didn’t like to be woken up, Rodney said. They’d got dressed quickly and gone out to the kitchen.

  It had been light enough at six-thirty for them to tell at a glance whether or not their brother’s bed was occupied. This meant Rodney was lying. Chris guessed the boy was used to lying where his older brother was concerned, and that it still hadn’t hit him that Bobby was dead.

  David began to cry. Sharon grasped his hand and squeezed it tight.

  Shaw kept up his questions: where did Bobby go at night?

  Avis said, blowing smoke towards the ceiling, ‘The pub.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Search me.’

  David’s crying grew louder. Sharon moved so that he could sit on her knee. Rodney looked stony-faced and angry.

  Avis spoke again. ‘We’re all sound sleepers in this family.’

  Chris realised that they would get no more out of the children while she was there.

  EIGHT

  ‘Paedophilia, Blackie,’ Inspector Ferguson intoned. ‘Young Bobby was a classic victim. Neglected at home. Parents drop kicks. Sister Sharon tried, but Bobby disobeyed her. Wandered everywhere, out half the night.’

  The DI stared at Chris from under heavy-lidded eyes. ‘You took the dog to Parkinson.’ And then, in case this wasn’t enough of a reminder, ‘Oh, we’ll get him. There’s some lovely stuff on his computer.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Did you know Parkinson had a digital camera?’

  Chris had seen the camera, but had thought nothing of it.

  ‘Bastard had the opportunity and means. Who else knew exactly where the kid would be and when? Who had the dog lead hanging on his door?’

  The inspector’s overdoing it, Chris thought. He’s not as convinced as he wants me to believe.

  The feeling grew — it was a physical sensation, like a hand on his shoulder — that Ferguson’s moves were being planned by someone else.

  ‘And Parkinson’s prints are on the lead. His and the boy’s. No one else’s,’ he added as a parting shot.

  Chris had to get away from Queenscliff, if only for a couple of hours, and he had to get Anthea away as well. He thought that Ferguson might forbid them to go, but after a moment’s hesitation the inspector agreed.

  Chris drove because he knew the way. Anthea leant her head back and closed her eyes.

  Paedophilia was the crime in the news, and on everybody’s mind. Small wonder if it should spring to the inspector’s. And Bobby had been a pretty boy, if undernourished. Indeed undernourishment may have been part of the attraction. Could Olly be a paedophile? Impossible, Chris’s nerves told him, while his over-taxed brain told him that nothing was.

  Olly was a gift to Ferguson, and to whoever had an interest in determining that he look no further. Chris wondered if he’d been chosen to head the inquiry with this proclivity in mind, or if it had been a lucky coming together of character and circumstance. He suspected the former.

  He wondered what had happened to Sharon’s schooling, and if the bakery was in any way her choice. He was sure her father knew exactly how much she was paid, and that the amount he allowed her to keep was less than her brother had managed to squirrel away. He mulled over the bond between Sharon and Bobby. Theirs had been a home in which alliances between children were sustained only with heroic effort. The two younger boys would have turned to each other in their room at night, while Bobby was out about his business. If Chris guessed right, Rodney would die rather than give him away. But it would not be hard to discover which hotel Bobby had frequented. Perhaps the staff were being questioned at that very moment.

  Chris did not want to be part of the investigation. It wasn’t just that Bobby was dead; he didn’t want anything to do with murder. Part of his reason for coming back to Queenscliff had been so that he could hedge his bets; see if he could satisfy himself with overdue fines and the occasional house fire, or if he really needed to get out altogether.

  He’d failed Bobby. Time might pass; that failure would remain. Chris hoped he could go some way towards atoning for it, or was that an illusion? He knew he would never be rid of his guilt, and did not think he had the right to be. He knew what other police officers, Sergeant Shaw among them, would say: as a rural constable, he’d lived too insular, too protected a life. It was time he woke up. To have worked as a police officer for fifteen years without having to confront the murder of a child was a luxury he’d had no right to expect. If they felt personally responsible every time a kid got killed, then they’d be no use to the force. That’s what Ferguson and Shaw would say.

  Yet Chris could not help seeing his inescapable responsibility and guilt, together with his lack of ambition, as a mix in which the different parts could not be separated. Young people — Olly and Anthea for instance — had time to mould and break and change the mould again. He did not. Yet if Olly went to jail for murder, his character would be shattered into a million pieces. He would not survive.

  The Hockings lived in a small weatherboard house on the outskirts of Winchelsea. Stuart’s father had found work with the local council.

  Stuart met the two constables with polite, well-mannered charm. When Chris had rung to arrange the interview, his mother had said that she would pick him up from school. Normally he went straight from school to swimming training. Chris was reminded of Phil McGilvrey, and the urge to share irrelevant information, but he knew the comparison between the two sets of parents ended there. He’d interviewed Stuart’s mother several times already and understood that she was fiercely protective of her son.

  There’d been an item about the murder on the midday news, and Bobby had been named. The press would have begun arriving in Queenscliff — another reason to get away for a few hours.

  Mrs Hocking made no secret of the fact that Chris and Anthea were unwelcome. She scoffed at the absurdity of Stuart travelling seventy kilometres to kill a former classmate. Chris explained patiently that they weren’t there to make accusations, but that any information Stuart could give them might be valuable.

  His mother looked as though she wanted to dispute this as well. She sat next to Stuart on a two-seater couch, but when she reached for her son’s hand, he pulled away.

  He’d been at home the night before. He’d done his homework, watched TV and gone to bed.

  When Chris asked Stuart if he knew what hotel the soldiers from Swan Island drank at, his mother interrupted to ask how a boy of his age would know that.

  Stuart nodded, perhaps to prove something to her, perhaps because he really did wish to answer the question truthfully.

  All the kids knew. And yes, the soldiers gave good tips. And yes, you could recognise their cars out the front. The number plates were colour coded.

  ‘Was Bobby friendly with the soldiers?’

  Stuart frowned and appeared to be giving the question serious attention, while his mother tried to interrupt again. Chris silenced her with a raised hand and shake of the head.

  But Stuart had had time to work out just how much he would reveal.

  ‘Does the hotel manager mind kids running in and out?’ Chris asked

  ‘Why should he?’ Stuart replied with a touch of his old defiance.

  Bobby hadn’t been part of the gang, of course — he’d been their enemy — but he’d hung around the Esplanade on Sundays, the best time for tips. Chris read into this statement that Bobby had been favoured and Stuart had been jealous of him.

  ‘Stuart’s a champion swimmer,’ his mother said. ‘He trains every day.’

  The boy had the gloss of a successful young athlete. It looked as though the move had done him good.

  Chris ordered tea and raisin toast at a café in Winchelsea’s main street. The thought of food made him gag, but he told Anthea that they needed to eat.

  Anthea took no more than a tiny mouthful, but sh
e drank two cups of tea.

  Chris wondered how detectives learnt to cope. Of course, it was seldom that any of them knew the victim. Personal involvement with any victim, let alone a child, would mean they wouldn’t be assigned to the case. It occurred to him that it might not be unusual, however, for uniformed constables to know a murder victim personally.

  ‘Olly’s computer,’ he said, looking up.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Are there photographs of Bobby on it?’

  Wariness made Anthea very still. ‘Possibly,’ she said.

  ‘So Olly took photographs of Bobby?’

  ‘Of Bobby and Max. I know of — of at least one occasion. And me too, I was there that day.’

  ‘Did he show them to you?’

  Anthea shook her head. She seemed about to add something and then changed her mind.

  Anger re-surfaced in the aching pressure of Chris’s hands on the steering wheel, in the way his eyes felt full of grit. He couldn’t remember having paid the waitress, or getting back into the car.

  Who had threatened Bobby, apart from Stuart Hocking? Stuart hadn’t been anywhere near Queenscliff last night. Was it ridiculous to think he’d actually wanted Bobby dead, over and above making a childish threat? Chris didn’t expect to get anything from the rest of the gang, though he’d insist on speaking to them all.

  He could suss out whether or not a new leader was emerging. The simplest and quickest way of doing this would be to put the four boys together in a room. Individually, all might deny having had anything to do with one another since Stuart left; but together Chris knew that they would not be able to help giving each other signals. A new leader might — Chris doubted the hypothesis, but wanted to put it to the test — have felt it necessary to make his mark early and hard. The ‘punishment’ planned for Bobby might have gone horribly wrong.

  NINE

  They pulled up outside a quiet police station. The press had come and gone, though Haverley said there was a group of them at the railway yard. Inspector Ferguson had gone to Melbourne in order to attend the post mortem, scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning. Haverley and Shaw were booked in to the Queenscliff Inn. Haverley instructed Chris and Anthea to begin door-knocking at the houses round the railway yard.