The Swan Island Connection

by Dorothy Johnston

  The soldiers would have paid Bobby well for any information he provided; they had the money, and Chris could not conceive of them being anything but generous, at least in Bobby’s terms.

  Another point seemed obvious: Bobby would not have taken money for lies, not when it was so easy to find and punish him. One possible explanation for the murder was that a punishment had got out of hand. This had been at the back of Chris’s mind when he’d questioned Stuart Hocking’s gang, and it was still there.

  There was another explanation for why his phone hadn’t rung all day: Olly Parkinson had already been charged. He turned the car radio on for the news, then turned it off again when there was no mention of an arrest.

  The lead must have been taken from the cottage while Olly was walking Bobby home. None of the neighbours had heard Max barking, and Max would have barked at a stranger. Making friends with Max suggested planning on the killer’s part; stealing the lead suggested someone who’d been watching Olly and Bobby’s movements and knew how to grasp an opportunity and act in a short time.

  The protestors’ best defence was to stick together as a group, yet Chris could imagine the heated discussion taking place at that moment, while Anthea swung left to avoid a commuter in a hurry. He pictured the Mellions’ dinner being interrupted not once, but three or four times by the phone. It was in the protesters’ interests that attention should remain fixed on Olly, just as it was in the soldiers’. What about those in charge on the island, and in Canberra, who would go to great lengths to avoid bad publicity?

  Chris wondered whether Bobby had come upon the protesters studying a map of the island. It was a possibility none of them had raised. But of course they wouldn’t volunteer a point like that.

  ‘If it was one of the soldiers —’ Anthea began.

  ‘Yes. Go on.’ Chris observed that Anthea’s hands were tense on the steering wheel, and that her cap was once again crammed low over her eyebrows.

  ‘Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? He had to get from the island to the mainland and back without being seen.’

  ‘Not by car, then.’

  ‘The checkpoint at the bridge would have been enough of a deterrent. Unless a group of them had come across at the start of the evening.’

  ‘By kayak?’ Chris suggested.

  ‘Or he swam. It’s no great distance. And it was low tide.’

  ‘Are you saying he got away unseen? His absence wasn’t noted?’

  Anthea took her time to answer. ‘I don’t know,’ she said finally. ‘It seems unlikely. The whole scenario’s unlikely. What motive would the soldiers have?’

  Instead of answering, Chris said, ‘His friends would have noticed he was gone.’

  ‘Okay,’ Anthea said carefully.

  ‘So he swims and wades over to the mainland. There’s less danger of being spotted, but it takes longer.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘How does he know where to find Bobby? How does he know where Bobby’s going to be?’

  ‘He had an accomplice who did know.’

  Chris thought about this, and the steps that had brought them to it. He said, ‘Maybe the accomplice was angry with Bobby on his own behalf.’

  The station was empty. They decided not to stay.

  Anthea still felt full from her half-eaten focaccia. At dusk, she took a torch and headed off on her favourite clifftop walk. She did not think that Bobby McGilvrey had used it, or not habitually, anyway. It was too winding, too up-and-down for a bike; in places so narrow a bike would have been all but impossible. Of course, Bobby didn’t always take his bike, not around the bay, for example, whose shore was soft and marshy. If Bobby had been on his bike that evening, if he’d stuck to the streets, perhaps he would still be alive.

  Anthea told herself she respected Chris for striking out, acting on his own initiative; but what would it achieve? They were no match for Inspector Ferguson and Sergeant Shaw; to set themselves up in competition was absurd.

  She stumbled, not thinking where she was putting her feet. She knew her way along the cliff path blindfolded. That was a conceit, but almost true. She walked to the point where, in full daylight, she would have been able to scour the shoreline for hundreds of metres in both directions. The days were growing longer, but she found it odd and frightening to think about the start of spring.

  A hundred metres from the railway yard, Anthea scrambled down and joined the path that followed the high water mark around the bay. Perhaps Bobby hadn’t been on his way to the hotel after all; perhaps he’d been taking something to his hiding place, something incriminating that his killer knew about. Or perhaps he’d been going to fetch something, which the murderer, with Bobby out of the way, had removed.

  Bobby had been killed swiftly and neatly. Had his murderer known where the boy’s hiding-place was without being told? In that case, why kill him? Because of something that he’d seen, or overheard?

  The shore path had been searched all the way back to Olly’s, and to the boat harbour in the opposite direction. Nothing had been found that was considered relevant to the investigation; or, if it had, neither Anthea nor Chris had been told about it.

  Anthea found herself at the coastguard office. She left the path and detoured round the back, where she saw a faint light, invisible from the bay side. Somebody was underneath the building with a torch.

  Anthea switched off her own torch, her eyes quickly adjusting to the moonlight reflected off the water. There was no sign of a car. She strained her ears, but was unable to pick up anything beyond the rustling of the night wind in the bushes. Then she thought she heard a dog’s quick snuffle. What was a dog doing there? Could it be Max with Olly? The wind was blowing off the bay. If she stayed where she was, she doubted that the dog would be able to smell her. The ground under her feet was messy, littered with dry twigs and leaves. She couldn’t move without making a noise.

  Anthea crouched behind a bush and pressed in Chris’s number.

  By the time Chris got there, man and dog were gone, if indeed there had been a man and dog underneath the coastguard office. Anthea had strained her eyes, but had not been able to catch the shadow of anybody leaving. She was worried that she’d done the wrong thing.

  ‘No,’ Chris told her. ‘You did right to call me. You did right not to follow on your own.’

  They checked that the office was locked. Underneath it, as far as Chris could tell by torchlight, nothing was disturbed.

  TWENTY

  Olly had been arrested at dawn. He was being held at the remand centre in Geelong.

  Shaw delivered the news in a self-satisfied voice.

  Chris stared at the sergeant. Aware of sounding ridiculous, he asked where Max was.

  Shaw’s answer was to smile, as though this was just the kind of dumb question he expected a uniformed constable to ask.

  The arrest had been coming, yet Chris had nurtured a forlorn hope that something would turn up, some piece of evidence that he alone, or he and Anthea together would discover, and that the inspector would not be able to ignore.

  Perhaps it was his fault; perhaps he’d missed his opportunity. He should have told Ferguson straight away when Peter Aaronson turned up. He should have gone last night to report on his suspicions concerning Alex Mellion.

  ‘What about bail?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Shaw said with another smile. ‘Parkinson’s announced that he’s going to represent himself.’

  Inspector Ferguson appeared in the doorway, phone held to his ear. He took time off from his conversation to tell Chris to watch his step, if he didn’t want his assistant charged as an accessory.

  ‘I could go and see him,’ Anthea said. ‘I’d tell him Max was okay, take him some fresh fruit.’

  Chris had fetched Max from Olly’s cottage and taken the dog to his place, then made Anthea a hot drink which she hadn’t touched.

  ‘I hope he’ll change his mind and get a lawyer,’ she said, pushing her mug away.

  ‘Do you think you could pe
rsuade him to do that?’ Chris asked.

  Anthea was silent for a while before saying quietly, ‘No.’

  ‘Tell Inspector Ferguson that you broke up with Olly the day Bobby’s body was found.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Tell them you’ve had nothing to do with him since then.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  Anthea’s voice was still quiet, but there was steel in it as well. She’d told Chris about Julie’s visit, and Olly playing scales on the piano. Chris remembered the sound echoing off the island like gunfire.

  Anthea sat up straight and stared at Chris. She’s in two minds, he thought. She’s torn two ways, as I am. If she felt sure Olly was guilty, if she’d pushed herself beyond a doubt, she’d accept the inevitable. She lies awake at night and swings one way, then the other.

  Once this is over, if she’s not arrested, Chris decided, Anthea will apply for a transfer or resign, probably the latter. I will lose her.

  ‘Well, old fella,’ Chris said to the dog sitting patiently at his feet, after Anthea had told him she was going home. ‘Now it’s you and me.’

  Anthea had offered to have Max, but pets weren’t allowed in the flats. Max could have stayed at Olly’s and Anthea could have gone next door to feed him. Had Olly at some stage given her a key? A small point, but Chris had never thought to ask. Max would have been a constant reminder even if she’d been allowed to keep him in her flat.

  ‘You’re a constant reminder,’ Chris said in a gentle voice, and then felt guilty because, even though the kelpie cross might not understand the words, he could understand sadness and reproach.

  Max sniffed all around Chris’s house and yard, then decided that by the front door was his spot. Chris put a blanket down.

  ‘When it’s dark we’ll go exploring.’

  He couldn’t tell the dog that Bobby was gone and wasn’t coming back. How long would it take him to accept that? Perhaps he never would. He couldn’t tell Max that Olly was gone and would probably not come back either.

  They watched each other, Max alert to the sounds of people passing in the street. None interested him. He would recognise OIly’s step, the sound of Olly’s car.

  It could be argued that dogs did not live long enough for their human companions, that eleven or twelve years — though small dogs tended to live longer — was too short a life span. But a dog who outlived his young master, what kind of anomaly was that?

  He had spent a tedious and frustrating day. The detectives were away from the station for most of it. No one asked him where Anthea was. Probably because they know, Chris thought.

  At nightfall, he let himself into Olly’s cottage, glad he could see well enough without a torch. He’d helped himself to a key from the front office, having rejected the idea of asking Anthea for one.

  Max conducted his own search, methodically, room by room. Once the dog was satisfied that Olly wasn’t in the house, he returned to Chris’s side.

  He asked himself what he really knew about Olly. Why hadn’t he found out more before entrusting Max and therefore Bobby to him? Olly had been Anthea’s boyfriend, but what did that come down to in the end?

  It came down to the fact that he’d trusted Olly; that Olly had come across as plausible and genuine, a reticent man who’d chosen not only to work for himself, but to live by himself as well. Should that have rung alarm bells? Had his failure to investigate Olly’s background ended in a tragedy?

  If there was anything to find in the cottage, the scene-of-crime team would have found it. They’d found the photographs on Olly’s computer easily enough.

  In his pocket, Chris carried, rolled into a ball, an old T-shirt of Bobby’s that Sharon had fetched for him from the boys’ bedroom. He smoothed it out. Max sniffed it and looked up.

  The dog knew what was expected of him without having to be told. With his nose down, he ran from room to room again, while Chris opened doors and cupboards. In Olly’s bedroom there was a heavy, old-fashioned chest of drawers.

  Chris emptied drawers. At the back of the bottom one, he found a pair of child’s underpants, worn but clean.

  Had Olly done the boy’s washing for him? Would he have suggested it? Would Bobby have allowed it? Chris couldn’t recall ever having seen Bobby in clothes that were completely clean. Olly was fastidious. It would have upset him to see the boy dressed in torn and dirty clothes.

  Max looked up inquiringly. Chris felt sick at heart.

  He drove home with Max on the passenger seat beside him. Afterwards, he could not recall the route he’d taken, and he forgot to check his rear vision mirror. He thought he’d make himself some toast, but could not force down a single mouthful. He tried to think of an innocent explanation. Olly had done Bobby’s washing and the underpants had somehow ended up mixed with his own clothes. Why hadn’t the scene of crime team found them? Was it possible that they’d been put there after the cottage had been searched?

  Chris knew he should go straight to the inspector, that he shouldn’t hesitate, or attempt to contact Anthea and warn her.

  He knelt down, put his arms around Max and let his tears soak into the dog’s warm fur. Then he sat for a long time staring at his hands.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Anthea got up after another sleepless night and let her feet carry her around the bay to the Esplanade hotel.

  She’d passed through to the other side of exhaustion and anxiety and now felt only numb.

  Hotels first thing in the morning were a world on their own, not that Anthea had had much chance to observe them. She and Graeme had stayed in country pubs a few times. It had been the sort of weekend away that they’d both enjoyed, she recalled with something like surprise. Graeme hadn’t loved her; he had been, when it came down to it, indifferent. But none of that mattered now.

  Graeme had always chosen the location; he did not like bed and breakfasts where the proprietors tended to ‘breathe down your neck’. He’d made sure of their Friday night dinner in advance, either in the hotel dining room, or at a restaurant close by. He even compared online menus and consulted her, though she’d known this consultation had been no more than a formality.

  Invariably, they had been asleep, or dozing after making love, at the unglamorous time of eight am.

  Anthea had never been inside the Esplanade; Chris wasn’t one for pubs. Neither were Olly and Julie Beshervase, the only friends she’d made since leaving Melbourne.

  The hotel’s bluestone façade looked forbidding. Anthea straightened her uniform and went inside.

  Last night’s smells of alcohol and stale breath hung around. A girl was yawning as she set out glasses behind the public bar. The big plasma TV was on, tuned to an American chat show. Two women who looked to be in their sixties were already seated at a row of poker machines.

  Anthea made her way through to the beer garden, which wasn’t quite deserted. A young man wiping tables turned and looked up as she approached.

  She ordered coffee and sat staring at an old grooved table, observing the way the wood had weathered, how deeply rough it was, without varnishes or oils of any kind. Her uniform made her conspicuous and she should have thought of that. On the other hand, there was no disguise, in this small town, that would have been adequate. She thought she might sit there, staring at the wood all day.

  Four men in leather jackets with bike helmets under their arms stood in front of Anthea while they decided on a table. She felt overcome by a dragging sense of hopelessness and sorrow. What kind of life had she thought to make for herself here, with a man she’d begun to hope — fool that she was! — might love her.

  Anthea hated Queenscliff at that moment, as violently as she’d hated it when she first arrived. The town seemed to combine the worst of both worlds; it was neither metropolitan, nor genuinely rural. There were too many misplaced urbanites, Olly and herself included. And now, like a giant boil on their backside, a training centre for spies and combat troops she’d scarcely given a thought to, apart from amusing
anecdotes, rose up to taunt her.

  Anthea finished her coffee and got up to go.

  She took note of the cars parked outside. One had a number plate with a green stripe along the side. Another was a blue Falcon, with thick mud coating its wheels and bumper bar, and a worn tartan rug on the back seat. Anthea memorised the rego number, then crossed the road, checking over her shoulder and catching her breath when a flock of yellow-tailed black cockatoos took off from the pine trees.

  Opposite the Esplanade was a triangle of grass and trees, with a bus stop and shelter at one end, and a monument of some kind at the other. There was privacy under the trees, if privacy was what you were after. At night, it was far enough away from the street and hotel lights to hide whoever chose to meet there. The spot would have been convenient for Bobby; if something went wrong, he could run inside.

  Anthea walked up to the monument, glancing back again over her shoulder as she did so. A movement behind a window, no more than a swiftly passing shadow, made her pause. It was probably a guest, or one of the cleaners. Anthea had the distinct feeling, though, that whoever it was had been watching her.

  The monument included a piece from Australia’s first warship, a huge metal figure-of-eight called a swivel link. Anthea read the writing on the plaque: the link was from the steam sloop Victoria, which had been built in 1854.

  She chanced a last look at the window, but this time saw no movement. She took note of which windows had the best view of the grassy triangle, decided that it wouldn’t matter if she delayed her arrival at the station for a few more minutes, and retraced her steps.