The Swan Island Connection

by Dorothy Johnston

  ‘I’ll take you home,’ Chris said.

  ‘What if they want me?’

  Let them whistle for you then, Chris thought. He said, ‘You look ill. You need to get away from here.’

  ‘It was a sunny day, a lovely day,’ Anthea said in a small voice.

  They were sitting on her balcony, though the cold wind might soon drive them inside.

  The sounds of the bay were all around them; it seemed that they were perched above the island, not looking across at it. There was the put-put of a tinnie, so familiar a background noise that a person had to concentrate to hear it. From somewhere behind them, a boy’s voice rose in excited laughter.

  ‘Where did you go?’ Chris asked.

  ‘We made sandwiches and took them down by the pier.’

  The sound of someone — it had to be Olly — playing scales on the piano, rose up from the cottage next door.

  ‘Five, six weeks ago,’ said Anthea, lifting her chin in the cottage’s direction. ‘Mostly they went out on their kayaks,’ she continued softly. ‘I didn’t want to interfere with that.’

  Anthea turned to stare at Chris. ‘Bobby and I made a sand castle. Olly took some snaps. Bobby had never — he never did those childhood things. You could tell by the way he laughed.’

  The scales sounded as though the pianist was forcing the notes out.

  ‘Max joined in, of course.’

  Olly would have caught that on camera, for Bobby’s sake. He might have made prints and given them to Bobby. If Bobby had kept them at home, the search team would have found them. But Bobby would never have kept a memento like that at home.

  ‘Olly said Bobby couldn’t be rushed. He meant trust, you know, to trust another human being.’

  ‘Were you ever suspicious?’

  ‘No. Never at the time. I am now.’ Anthea swung her head sharply as the tempo of the scales increased. ‘If it suits them to arrest us both, well —’ she attempted a weak smile.

  ‘I’m more to blame than you are.’

  Anthea’s expression said, what’s the point of tossing blame between us? What good will that do?

  The scales continued marching up and down, as though in a race against some unseen orchestra, or fate.

  ‘How long has he been doing that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t been here. Well, you know that. Not last night.’

  Sergeant Shaw had also shown Anthea photographs of Bobby doing his homework in Olly’s tiny living-room with Max lying at his feet.

  ‘Olly didn’t talk to me,’ she said.

  ‘About?’

  ‘His relationship with Bobby. I mean, he didn’t talk about it much, and I didn’t want to pry.’ Anthea swallowed as though the movement hurt her. ‘I thought things were going well, considering.’

  ‘So did I,’ Chris said.

  Like a funeral lament, or some kind of weird theatrical chorus, the scales rose up to echo his words. Chris knew little about music, but they all seemed to be in minor keys.

  ‘Do you want to stay here? I can cover for you.’

  ‘No,’ Anthea said.

  That afternoon the two constables returned to their house-to-house. When Chris knocked on the door of the front office to say they had nothing further to report, Inspector Ferguson nodded indifferently, while Shaw smiled in private amusement.

  Before leaving for the day, Chris asked the sergeant if he could see the photographs Olly had taken of Bobby.

  Shaw handed him a folder with an expression that said Chris might be a big constable in a little pond, but that didn’t count for much. Chris wanted to ask where Sergeant Haverley was, since he hadn’t seen him all day. He suspected Haverley was keeping, in so far as he could contrive it, out of the way of the other two.

  Chris took the folder home and spread it out on his kitchen table.

  In the shots of Bobby doing his homework, late winter sun shone through Olly’s living room window — not Swan Bay’s magical light, but still a kind of blessing on the fair head bent in concentration. In a few of the outdoor shots, the island was visible in the distance as a line of purple-grey.

  By themselves, there was nothing incriminating about them. At the centre of each composition was a small, waif-like boy with the sun in his hair, a solemn boy, calculating and duplicitous, though you couldn’t guess that by looking at him.

  It wasn’t a crime to keep photos of a child. Yet Olly hadn’t told Anthea about the ones taken in his cottage. Why not, if they were as innocent as Chris hoped they were?

  Chris busied himself that evening making notes on the conversations he’d had with the townsfolk as he’d gone from door to door. He doubted that Ferguson would want a written report, but in any case, he told himself the notes were for him and Anthea. All of the people he’d spoken to that day and the previous evening knew him to say hello to: some had known him all his life. Not a few had made him a present of their theories. It was a tramp who’d done it, a hoon from Melbourne, a hippy high on drugs. Chris had listened and only cut them short when they began repeating themselves. He knew from experience how a tiny speck of gold dust could be hidden in a pile of dung.

  But for all his careful listening, the hours spent asking questions had not turned up a single useful piece of information. The houses round the railway line all had long back yards. They were old houses, on big blocks, and their walls were thick. There’d been an AFL match on TV the night Bobby died and every inhabitant of that part of town, bar one, had been inside watching it. The one exception had been at the pub.

  Chris’s ears had shot up when he heard this. But the man had stayed until closing time and had walked home along the street, well away from the railway yard.

  Chris understood that shame and guilt could take many forms, and that some people, if put to the test, might lie convincingly, might appear quite other than he’d assessed them to be in his long acquaintance with them. Though he’d had plenty of experience in dealing with minor crimes, he’d never before looked into a man or woman’s face and asked himself: are you a killer?

  When Jack Benton had confronted him holding a shotgun, there’d been no doubt, no mystery. When Benton had kicked him in the back and held his head underwater, these actions were only the culmination of what he expected from a man who’d bashed his wife to death.

  Bobby’s parents had not known or cared what their son had got up to at night, though Phil McGilvrey searched the house for money, and beat the boy to get him to reveal his hiding place. Sharon might know, but she would have promised her brother never to reveal any secrets that he might have shared with her.

  TWELVE

  The remnants of Stuart Hocking’s gang were round-eyed and solemn, lined up on chairs in the back office. None of the parents had made as much fuss about the interview as Chris had been afraid they might.

  The boys did not speak unless forced to, and none made eye contact with another.

  Chris asked if any of them had access to metal bars, in their father’s sheds, for instance.

  ‘We didn’t hit him, Sir!’ cried Simon, appealing to Chris, who felt sorry for him, until he recalled how the lot of them had tried to burn Max alive.

  He repeated his question about metal bars until each boy had denied it.

  All wore their hair in the currently fashionable style, long on the top and clipped practically to the scalp at the back and sides. Chris observed a likeness also in the way the boys breathed; in the heaving of chests soon to stretch across the breach of puberty; in their high, tense, brittle voices, straining after notes that would soon be forever out of reach.

  They confirmed that they’d sometimes spent Sunday afternoons at the Esplanade and that Bobby had been there as well.

  ‘Only not for ages, Sir,’ the one called Jason said.

  When questioned further, it became clear that Jason was referring to the gang; he had no idea whether Bobby had been at the hotel last Sunday, for instance, or the Sunday before. They never went there at night. All four shook the
ir heads decisively at this.

  ‘Our parents wouldn’t let us.’

  These same parents had all provided alibis for the night Bobby was killed. Chris had not expected otherwise.

  Used to ranging around town, Bobby could have been on his way anywhere the night he was killed, but Chris was confident that he’d been heading for the Esplanade. Why would anyone want to stop him reaching the hotel, and who was he intending to meet when he got there? It occurred to Chris that Bobby had sought help for distressed or threatened animals, never for himself.

  He knew that he would not be allowed to question Olly, and that if he did so without Ferguson’s permission, he’d face censure and possibly dismissal. But it was important to find out if Olly knew about the time Bobby spent at the hotel.

  Sergeant Shaw poked his head around the door.

  ‘What’s this? Choir practice?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Take Merritt and call by the school.’

  ‘Sir?’ Chris said again.

  ‘The kid’s class teacher and the principal. Take these lads back with you. Can’t have them missing their arithmetic.’

  Chris let the boys go, after telling them he’d want to talk to them again. He might have pointed out to Shaw that it was lunch time, but he held his tongue.

  He was aware of how braced and tense Anthea was in the short drive to the primary school, understanding that she’d been grilled about Olly again some time during the morning, and that she felt she couldn’t talk to him about it yet.

  ‘Yes,’ the school principal, Frederick Yuille, replied in response to Chris’s question. Bobby had stopped wagging school. Yuille shook his head in disbelief. Murdered? How could that be possible?

  They had agreed that Chris would ask the questions while Anthea took notes.

  Yuille did not look like a primary school principal, but then, Anthea asked herself, what was a primary school principal supposed to look like?

  ‘Call me Fred,’ was his opening remark: too casual, thought Anthea, but he didn’t seem to be hiding an underlying nervousness. His black hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wore jeans and an open-necked white shirt. His blue eyes were less convincing when they attempted a sorrowful expression.

  The principal reminded Anthea of Graeme, and she found the reminder unsettling. Memories of Graeme, who had broken up with her after her move to Queenscliff, remained a deeply embedded splinter that could mostly be ignored, but occasionally hurt.

  It wasn’t that the two men were similar to look at. Graeme would have found long hair a nuisance, and a pony tail an affectation. Fred Yuille’s approach to life, Anthea guessed from his demeanour, was to treat it as a game. And that was something he and Graeme had in common. Anthea had read somewhere that you could do anything with children as long as you played with them. She thought that if the truth of this claim could be demonstrated it might be with Fred Yuille.

  ‘Who were Bobby’s friends at school?’ Chris asked.

  ‘He had none.’ Yuille looked surprised by the question.

  Anthea bent her head over her notebook, thinking that the principal was too young and handsome to bury himself in a place like Queenscliff. A step on the way to further promotion, she guessed. She also guessed that he was used to asking questions, rather than answering them.

  ‘Did Bobby get to school on time?’

  ‘Most mornings, just. We have an outside assembly twice a week. Bobby was in the habit of arriving a microsecond before it began.’

  ‘Did you speak to him about it?’

  ‘If you mean by way of a reprimand, then no. He was making an effort. I wanted to encourage that.’

  ‘But you did speak to him?’

  ‘I told Bobby we were all pleased with the progress he was making.’ Glancing at Chris, Anthea saw that he was sceptical about Yuille as well.

  But Chris’s voice was neutral as he asked, ‘Did you ever see Bobby out at night?’

  ‘At night? Where?’

  Ah, thought Anthea, you’re paying attention now.

  ‘At the Esplanade hotel.’

  ‘I’d hope that young boys would not be hanging around pubs at night, and that if they were, you’d know about it, constable.’

  When Chris ignored the implied insult and repeated his question, Yuille answered with a shake of the head.

  The principal said Bobby’s younger brothers ‘looked after each other’.

  ‘And Sharon?’

  ‘Sharon left before my appointment here.’

  ‘What about Stuart Hocking’s gang? The remnants of it. I know Stuart’s moved to Winchelsea.’

  Yuille raised his handsome face and Anthea watched several emotions pass across it — embarrassment, sadness, the urge to justify himself.

  ‘Unfortunately, bullying is a problem from time to time, as it is in all schools.’

  ‘Who was bullied?’

  ‘Well, Bobby, obviously.’ Yuille appeared to reconsider. ‘He, well —’

  ‘Dobbed them in?’

  ‘What they attempted to do to that dolphin was cruel and stupid.’

  ‘What revenge did the boys take?’

  ‘Apart from Bobby’s dog? None that I’m aware of.’

  ‘Schoolyard fights?’

  Yuille shook his head, and Anthea thought he was probably right. Bobby would have done his best to avoid a fight, and the gang had plenty of opportunities to get back at him outside of school. Which was the point. Which Yuille recognised as well as they did. But the principal said nothing further.

  ‘What about other instances of bullying?’

  ‘Involving those same boys?’

  ‘Or anyone.’

  Yuille shook his head again.

  Success had polished the young man like glitter on sand when the sea is drawing back from it. Anthea guessed that he’d had very little contact with the police, that no reports of fires in rubbish bins had led them to any of his previous schools. She did not know if anything had been said about the arrangements to have Max looked after, and guessed that Bobby would not have divulged them unless directly asked. Yuille’s self-confidence was that of a man who, ever since he’d reached adulthood, had been dealing with people half his size. Yet his school could be a breeding ground for adult crime, or nurture already determined criminals.

  Somebody’s school had to be doing this. Anthea suspected that, of all the people Fred Yuille had set himself to charm, his greatest success had been in charming himself. Again, this reminded her of Graeme.

  Chris went on asking questions in a quiet, undemonstrative way.

  ‘Did Bobby have other problems at school?’

  ‘You mean with his work? Of course he’d missed a lot. You’d learn more about that from his class teacher.’

  ‘Any other problems?’

  ‘No,’ said Yuille, glancing at his watch.

  Bobby’s class teacher wept throughout the interview, and was unable to add anything they did not already know. Anthea, happy to take notes again and watch while Chris asked questions, suspected that she might have trouble keeping control of her class. The teacher gave the impression that Bobby had been an unobtrusive, mostly silent presence in her classroom. His work had not been bad, she said with some surprise, considering how much time he’d missed. His maths had been behind. When Chris asked if he’d been given extra help to catch up, the teacher said she’d considered arranging it.

  She accompanied this statement with an inquiring look, indicating that she knew Olly had been helping Bobby with his homework, but when Chris questioned her directly about it, she was unforthcoming.

  ‘Did you get the impression that Bobby was comfortable with Mr Parkinson?’

  ‘I suppose so. Bobby kept to himself. He was good at hiding his feelings.’

  The teacher had neither met Olly, nor spoken to him on the phone. Anthea wondered if this was a black mark against her, then reminded herself that the young woman had thirty pupils in her class. Bobby hadn’t been disruptive, therefore he’d
been left alone. And this was how Bobby would have wanted it.

  Before they left, the teacher made a point of commenting through her tears on Fred Yuille’s popularity, saying that children who hated school had begun to enjoy it after his appointment as principal.

  THIRTEEN

  Chris left Anthea typing notes. Since the detectives were all off somewhere and there were no further instructions for them at the station, he decided to pay a visit to the coastguard office.

  The building was an anomaly, an old weatherboard shed that had not been meant to last more than a few years. Queenscliff’s only remaining volunteer coastguard officer was inside, staring at the wall, then at Chris when he appeared in the doorway.

  Chris had known Tom Maloney all his adult life. He saw that underneath his shock and grief, the older man was furious. Within a few moments, Chris had found out why.

  Sergeant Shaw, who’d questioned Tom the previous afternoon, had been rude and aggressive. He’d demanded an account of everything Tom had done on the evening Bobby had been killed. When he discovered that Bobby had been in the habit of dropping by the coastguard office, he’d accused Tom of failing to come forward.

  ‘It was just a few hours after the — after Bobby —’

  Tom put his head in his hands, but he answered questions readily enough once he understood that Chris was there to listen. He’d been aware of the early-morning activity at the railway yard, and it had taken him only a few minutes to find out who the victim was. He’d stayed well back and Chris hadn’t noticed him. He wondered if the man from ASIS had.

  Tom practically lived at the coastguard office, a single man who’d made a niche for himself in Queenscliff; another loner, shy and self-contained.

  Bobby had enjoyed dropping in with Max. Tom hadn’t pried into the boy’s affairs, and the three of them had got on fine.

  The office stood on old wooden foundations half a metre off the ground. When Chris said he’d like to take a look underneath, Tom seemed about to object, then shrugged.

  Nest was the right word, Chris thought, crouching on all fours, studying a torn and faded rug covered with dog hairs. It had once been tartan, green and black. The wool was matted, the blanket full of holes.