The Swan Island Connection

by Dorothy Johnston

  Anthea felt convinced that there must be an ideal room in the hotel for watching the checkpoint, and that it was probably the one where she’d glimpsed a shadow when she was looking up from the triangle of grass and trees.

  Chris came out to the verandah, shutting the door quietly behind him.

  ‘Someone on the hotel staff will know something,’ he said.

  Anthea looked up, quick to take his meaning. ‘If I was working there, I’d be frightened of Mr Griffin.’

  Chris put his hand on the back of a chair, but did not sit down. ‘When he was appointed manager, he sacked a lot of the old staff and brought in new people. That should have made me wonder.’

  ‘Are you saying they’re involved?’

  ‘I think Griffin likes flying solo. Bobby was an exception.’

  Chris was recalling one hotel employee who had not been asked to leave, a woman of his own age, whom he’d known since primary school. It was she who’d told him about the old staff. He should stay away from her, for her own sake. He should not go near her now.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Anthea expected her conversation with Olly to be taped. She told herself that it was probably the only reason she’d been allowed to see him.

  Olly looked thinner, paler, but in control of his feelings and expression. Anthea told herself he could have refused to see her, and tried to take comfort from the fact that he hadn’t. She wanted to reach out and take his hand.

  ‘Max is okay. He’s with Chris.’ Her voice sounded gruffer and more formal than she intended.

  ‘And you?’ Olly stared straight at her. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘No.’ Anthea reddened. ‘Of course not.’

  She’d looked up the names of a few barristers and written down their phone numbers. ‘Here,’ she said, passing across a sheet of paper.

  Olly frowned. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘You need a lawyer. You should have got one straight away.’

  ‘Who are you to tell me what I need and don’t need?’

  ‘Olly. Please.’

  ‘What about the little boys and Sharon?’ Olly asked, pushing the piece of paper aside. He clenched his fists above the table. There was a bruise on his left temple. Anthea only noticed it now that his face had gone white.

  ‘The boys are frightened, naturally. Sharon’s looking after them.’

  Anthea thought of the picnic, sunlight on the grass and water, Bobby’s delighted laughter, how the three of them had played a game with Max.

  When she described the hotel manager, Olly shook his head to indicate that the description meant nothing to him, but he had seen Bobby on the beach talking to a man with a German Shepherd. When he’d mentioned it to Bobby, the boy had told him that the dogs were friends.

  ‘What happened that night?’

  ‘I got back from walking Bobby home. I practised the piano, then I went to bed.’

  ‘What about Max?’

  ‘He lay down on his blanket and went to sleep.’

  ‘Did you notice that his lead was missing?’

  ‘I had no reason to look.’

  ‘Was Bobby any different that night?’

  ‘I’ve already answered all these questions.’

  ‘Olly, ring one of those numbers. Please.’

  ‘You came here to get me to confess to murder. To try the softly softly approach when bullying and threats don’t work.’

  Anthea opened her mouth to say that she was being threatened with arrest as well.

  ‘I used to think you were an honest person. We may have had our differences, but I believed you told the truth. I don’t have any more to say to you. I want you to leave now.’

  Anthea sat in her car and cried. Then she lifted her head and squared her chin. The light was the same as on the day of the picnic, a light that had seemed to hold the promise of Bobby’s future, to hold and transmit it like a gift.

  Olly had moved closer to her on the grass and they’d clasped each other’s hands. Why had she forgotten that till now? Perhaps she hadn’t forgotten it; perhaps it had never happened. She was making up a compensatory fantasy because the truth was too hard to bear.

  It had been after the game with Max and they’d dropped down on the grass, sweating and laughing. There’d been real warmth in the air, making it hard to believe that winter still had a way to go. Bobby had sprawled with his head on Max’s red-brown fur. Olly had let go of her hand and reached for his camera. Bobby had been replete with sun, good food and laughter; he’d scarcely noticed he was being photographed. His eyes had been half shut. His t-shirt had bunched up around his midriff. Anthea remembered noticing that he’d put on weight.

  Olly hadn’t shown her any of the pictures afterwards.

  Anthea reminded herself that she’d chosen a career in the police force, though not as a detective. She’d had some notion — it was hard to recollect — of helping others, ensuring ordinary people felt safe in their own homes and streets, that women could walk at night if they chose to, that children could play on the grass with their dogs.

  Suspicion had to harden in her before she paid attention to it. Did this mean she wasn’t cut out for the police? Some of her old Melbourne friends might say yes; they’d never understood her choice. Others might say she’d had insufficient experience, that experience would harden her.

  Did it matter what other people thought? No, Anthea answered her own question silently. What mattered was that she should learn from her mistakes and find a way to move forward.

  Sergeant Shaw was teasing her, threatening her with arrest. They were probably his instructions, but the enjoyment he got out of it was personal.

  What sort of an excuse was it to claim that she’d never given those photographs a second thought? And now there was another, more incriminating piece of evidence. Did it make sense that a pair of child’s underpants had been planted for Shaw or Ferguson to find? If this were the case, wouldn’t they have done so? Why leave them there for Chris? Because it didn’t occur to them that Chris would search Olly’s cottage? Even so, waiting made no sense.

  If she hadn’t been so sure her conversation with Olly was being taped, she would have asked him. Anthea clung to the idea that so far only herself and Chris knew what he’d found in the chest of drawers. But was this being hopelessly naïve?

  And what about Inspector Ferguson? Was he waiting for the signal to arrest her as Olly’s knowing, or gullible accomplice? An arrest might not be part of the inspector’s plan. He might file a complaint instead, detailing the reasons why she had failed in her duties as a police officer, in particular her duty of care to a vulnerable, neglected child. She’d be given a choice — resign or be dismissed.

  She’d give up her flat — she was only renting. Whatever happened with regard to her job, she couldn’t see herself continuing to live next door to Olly’s cottage, knowing Olly had been convicted of murder.

  Anthea knew she ought to put the key in the ignition and drive off, but found she couldn’t move. She recalled a day-dream she’d had, of moving in with Olly, re-arranging the cottage to accommodate a couple. In this day-dream she’d taken very little space for herself. But Olly had not begrudged her that little; he’d been welcoming, the solitary core inside him melting, softening round the edges in order to let her in.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  A local farmer, Frank Erwin, invited Chris out to his farmhouse for a chat.

  ‘I saw Julie last week,’ Frank said, when they were sitting in the kitchen with his wife Celia, and a large blue teapot between them. ‘Seems young Riza’s starting to earn his keep.’

  They talked for a while about Julie and her camel. Chris understood that Celia had something to tell him, but knew he’d have to let her take her time. If he appeared to be in a hurry, she might change her mind.

  Frank drank his tea slowly, heaving his shoulders and saying, ‘Ah, that’s better.’ His eyes were shrewd and bright in a face lined from a lifetime spent in the sun and wind.

  Both Frank
and Celia were beginning to lean against the prevailing south-westerlies; it was apparent in the way they walked, the way they sat as well; they were growing like the bushes on their land.

  Chris asked after children and grandchildren. Jim was fine, Frank said. ‘Over-worked as usual.’ The little ones were thriving. ‘Don’t get to see as much of them as we’d like, but Cel’s going down for a few days at the end of the month.’

  Celia looked up at this and nodded, then bit her bottom lip. Their daughter Sarah was also doing well. Unlike Jim, she’d opted for the city, and was the main reason Celia’s shopping trips and outings usually took her in that direction.

  Frank expressed cautious hopes for his canola crop. The Erwins’ largest paddocks had been planted with canola for the last few years. In spring, their yellow flowers could be seen for miles around. Townspeople complained of hayfever. Frank and other farmers who’d gone into canola laughed at their complaints.

  Chris watched Celia, noting that her hand was not quite steady when she offered him a selection of biscuits.

  He’d always found Celia to be a self-sufficient woman, devoted to her family and as competent on a tractor as her husband. She came from the Mallee, from a farming family. Her tea was excellent, brewed for exactly the right length of time in the blue ceramic pot. Chris thought that she would smile at the picture of two police officers dunking their teabags on the station’s back lawn, and that her smile would contain only the merest hint of condescension.

  Frank stood up and announced that it was time he got back to work. Celia began clearing plates and cups.

  ‘It must be one of those funny co-incidences you read about,’ she said quietly, looking along her shoulder at Chris after her husband had left the room. ‘A car got a flat tyre just past our main gate. I was walking up to get the mail. I’d seen the postie go by not five minutes before, then this car pulled over and a man got out.’

  Celia hurried, now that she’d begun, wanting to get it over with.

  ‘It must have gone over a nail or something, and one of the back tyres was flat. I stopped because, well, you expect a man to be able to change a tyre, but you never know these days, and he was disabled — well, I don’t know if that’s the right word. I waited to see if he needed help. He was talking on his mobile, then he started shouting, using words I won’t repeat. I don’t know if he saw me. He took no notice of me anyway.’

  ‘Do you remember anything the man said, apart from the swearing?’

  Celia blushed deeply, glancing towards the door.

  ‘He shouted that he was going to be ‘f-ing’ late and it was ‘f-ing’ too bad and they’d have to set up another drop because of the ‘f-ing’ state of the road.’

  ‘Were those his exact words, “set up another drop”?’

  Celia nodded. ‘I thought it was odd. That’s why I’ve remembered it. I can’t see that it can have anything to do with — well, you know, but —’

  Chris thanked Celia for telling him and asked her to describe the car. She did so, relieved now. A blue Falcon, it had been, not new, and none too clean. She recalled the start of the registration number, but not all of it.

  ‘I collected the post and walked back to the house. In spite of carrying on like that, he must’ve changed his flat pretty quickly, because next time I looked out the window he was gone.’

  Why the panic, Chris asked himself. Had Griffin already been running late? If it had been Griffin. The car’s make and model fitted. The rego number, the part of it Celia remembered, fitted the number Anthea had memorised, belonging to the Falcon she’d noticed parked outside the Esplanade.

  Chris would have felt confident without the limp, but as far as he was concerned, that clinched it. Who had Griffin been calling? Chris would have given what remained of his cherished long service leave for a look at the man’s phone records.

  ‘Do you recall the date?’ he asked.

  ‘About six weeks ago. I’m trying to remember what the bills were. That might help. Is it important?’

  Chris said that it might be.

  ‘Maybe Frank remembers.’ Celia made a complicated face by which Chris understood that she did not want to ask him, that he’d been opposed to Celia reporting the incident at all.

  Chris thanked her again and said goodbye. He called cheerio to Frank through the open door of the tractor shed, and drove to the gate, but then instead of heading straight back to town, parked a little way along the gravel. He pulled his notebook out of the glove box and wrote down what Celia had witnessed while it was fresh in his mind, underlining the words ‘set up another drop’.

  Chris didn’t doubt that Griffin swore when something happened to interrupt his schedule. But had this been the normal reaction of an impatient man, or had something out of the ordinary been at stake?

  Something unforeseen and troubling was occurring. People Chris knew reasonably well, and relied on to keep him informed, were wary of him, drawing back as though he’d been contaminated by the murder, which of course he had.

  The townsfolk and surrounding farmers had withdrawn as though guilt stretched out over their local constable, covering him with a cloak that he must wear until the killer was tried and sentenced. It didn’t help that Sergeant Shaw had made a bad impression, but Chris thought the withdrawal would have happened anyway.

  Celia would deny this, if he put it to her. She would be hurt and offended, and he would lose the chance to regain her confidence, possibly forever.

  Fifteen minutes later, Chris was on the headland overlooking the main Ocean Grove beach. Not far from there, just around at the river mouth, Bobby had seen Stuart Hocking and the others in Mr Hocking’s boat. He’d waited for Bobby that morning when Bobby should have been at school, but instead had met him to say he was worried about Max.

  The tide was out. Rocks shone, and the wet sand between them. Piles of kelp, big enough to make a house from, covered one end of the beach. Beyond them loped a large, sure-footed German Shepherd joined to his handler by a red lead that shone also, as though it had been in the water.

  Chris had brought binoculars. He positioned himself behind a clump of bushes, which, though not tall, screened him from anybody looking up directly from the beach.

  Griffin walked quickly to a rocky point, then turned and retraced his steps. Chris thought of a way the hotel manager might have come by his limp. The dog seemed to be walking a little too fast for the man this time, in that low wolf-lope German Shepherds had been bred to, so that even when they were standing still, they seemed about to spring.

  Was the hotel manager signalling to someone?

  Chris tried to recall the spy stories he’d read. Did holding the dog’s lead in the right hand mean something different from holding it in the left? And to whom was Griffin signalling? A boat out at sea?

  It was easy to understand why exercising the German Shepherd along the shore of Swan Bay might be a useful way of passing messages to someone on the island. No need to worry about your phone calls being intercepted when you didn’t use a phone. The Ocean Grove beach was a different matter, facing, as it did, straight out to sea. That lapse on the road outside Celia’s gate had been a bad one, brought on by temper. Griffin was probably regretting it now. From his first sight of him, Chris had picked the hotel manager as a man with a temper.

  He trained his binoculars on the horizon and swung slowly round, trying to ignore the nausea that staring at the ocean always gave him. He still didn’t know if Griffin owned the dog, or was exercising him for someone else.

  There were always a couple of fishing boats, unidentifiable at this distance even with binoculars, the figures merely smudges, though Tom, who knew everyone who made his living on the water, might have recognised them.

  Chris put his glasses down and sighed. He thought back to that period of guarding Bobby’s body before the inspector and his sergeants had arrived, recalling once again the tall man from the island making his way across uneven ground; a man used to being in charge, preparing t
o take charge once again, but momentarily out of his element. Tragedy could be considered as no more than inconvenience by a certain kind of man.

  Chris turned to look over his shoulder and winced, as though the sight of Griffin and the dog had physically hurt him.

  He went home and began composing a report. He had more or less given up the idea of submitting anything in writing to Ferguson, but a vague plan of going round the inspector began to form. It remained vague, however; any name that came to Chris’s mind, above the inspector in rank, would almost certainly take his side.

  He told himself he wouldn’t worry about that now. He needed a record for himself and Anthea.

  He spread sheets of paper around his kitchen table, having taken the precaution of closing his curtains, and locking both front and back doors. He wrote quickly and his wrist felt limber. He did not embroider his account, or try to squeeze out of his memory of interviews anything more than they had conveyed at the time.

  A quotation arrived, a line of poetry, unbidden. Till he seemed castaway, forgetting and forgot. It would stay until he made a concerted effort to remove it. At school he’d had to hide his enjoyment of poetry. These fragments have I shored against my ruins. He’d learnt not to give himself away, but recalled the words without effort, as he’d recalled them during long after-school hours when he’d roamed the streets. That wouldn’t be his way, though in ‘shored’ there was a whole underground lake of irony. And the springs that fed it? Right here with me, Chris thought.

  Blackmail: once he wouldn’t have thought Bobby capable of it. Now he thought Bobby capable of almost anything.

  Chris wasn’t in the habit of thinking of himself as lucky. He bought raffle tickets as a favour to whoever was selling them, and was considered by various local charities and clubs as a certainty; but he had never won anything, not even a Rotary Club crayfish. Yet after he had folded his papers away and tidied the table, he decided that luck might, for a while at least, be on his side.