The Swan Island Connection

by Dorothy Johnston

  TWENTY-SIX

  To be truly mysterious, Anthea thought, as she poured chardonnay for herself and Chris, an island ought to be glimpsed from the horizon, blue-grey, often misty and obscured by sea haze. Prohibition should be absolute, except of course for the hero of the story, who would always find a way to break though the spells surrounding the magic place. There should be a ruined castle too, a ghost, a maiden in a tower.

  Anthea thought of Olly in his prison cell and over-poured the wine.

  Chris was quick with a cloth and quick of movement, eyes turned, as usual, away from the water.

  He knew the visit to Olly had not gone well; she would give him the details when she was ready. He’d advised against it, but she’d been determined.

  Chris sat down again and took a sip of his wine. He related a story about listening to gunfire in the early morning when he was a boy; how once there’d been a huge explosion, much louder than any he’d heard since. Curious, he’d listened to the radio and asked his parents, who claimed to be as ignorant as he was, though his father, crewing for pilot boats, heard stories and contributed to them.

  His parents hadn’t seen fit to discuss matters of importance in front of their son, Chris told Anthea with a glitter in his eyes, which quickly gave way to embarrassment, as he recalled that Anthea had had no parents to complain of past the age of three.

  He’d never found out what had caused the bang, whether it had been intended, or was a mistake.

  He recalled the sound of Olly’s scales, and wondered if Anthea was thinking of them too. Perhaps she lay awake at night and heard them, shook her head to free herself and felt she must be going mad.

  Anthea lifted her glass to the lowering western light. The wine in it was the palest yellow-green, colour of the seagrass meadows.

  Chris thought of kayaks, of Olly and Bobby covering the water, paddles lifting and falling in a seductive rhythm.

  He cocked his head. ‘Look. Over there. Under the Moonah. I think it’s a fox.’

  ‘I’ve seen them once or twice, but never in daylight.’

  ‘Do you want to go inside?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Chris smiled to say good on you for not giving in.

  After saying goodnight to Anthea, Chris walked around the hotel twice before going in, memorising windows and directions. What a hub of activity it must have been a hundred years ago. People looked for something different now; they expected ensuites, central heating, air-conditioning in summer; they would expect it even in those tiny rooms up near the roof, which was surely where the servants would have lived.

  Minnie Lancaster was at the reception desk. When Chris raised his cap to her, she smiled and lifted an expressive red-gold eyebrow. Her hair was the same colour. Beneath it, her face was unlined, and as attractive to Chris as it had been when they were teenagers.

  ‘Boss having a night off?’

  Minnie shrugged. Chris knew she was watching him closely, and on guard.

  He asked her when she knocked off and she told him half past ten.

  A hotel the size of the Esplanade would have an attic for storing luggage, where furniture accumulated which was too worn to be used downstairs, too big to fit into any of the servants’ rooms. There were no attic windows visible from the street. As he walked around the building, Chris had visualised the layout of the town, the police station visible from the hotel roof. Then there was the checkpoint and the bridge: with binoculars, whoever was watching would have no trouble reading registration numbers and identifying who was in the cars.

  Minnie didn’t look surprised to find Chris waiting for her shortly after ten-thirty, on the corner of Wharf and Bridge Streets, under a large gum tree.

  An itch under his fingernails told him that a line had been crossed. From his vantage point on the other side of it, he knew he ought to tell Minnie to assume nothing and trust nobody. Then he ought to walk away.

  A person couldn’t live that way, without trust of any kind.

  Chris smiled a greeting, doffed his cap again.

  ‘Minnie the moocher,’ he said.

  Minnie laughed. ‘It’s a long time since anybody’s called me that!’

  ‘Remember those dances?’

  ‘You were a good dancer.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You hid your light under a bushel, Chris Blackie.’

  Blushing scarlet, Chris was glad of the darkness. Of all the things he would never have predicted — Minnie actually noticing him at a surf club dance.

  Chris heard his voice ask a question. ‘How many of the staff know?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘That there’s something funny going on.’

  ‘A kid gets murdered and you call it funny?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  When Minnie began to walk away, Chris followed her. ‘You never thought to report it?’

  ‘Report what? Who to?’

  ‘To me.’ If I’d been warned, Chris thought, Bobby might still be alive.

  They passed under a street light. Minnie’s expression of disgust was obvious. ‘You might have been a good dancer, but you’re hardly God almighty.’

  Chris decided that he hated pubs, and wanted, all of a sudden, to tell Minnie she was beautiful, that he’d thought her beautiful all those years ago, and hadn’t dared to say so.

  Minnie would reject the compliment, but that didn’t matter so much just then as getting the words out. When she’d married the handsome son of the local shell grit merchant, Chris had told himself that it was fitting, right. He’d told himself that he felt glad for her. When her handsome young husband had run his motorbike off the highway and into a tree a few months after they returned from their honeymoon, Chris had gone to the funeral and expressed his condolences like everybody else; he’d waited to see who she’d marry next. For he’d had no doubt that Minnie would re-marry. She’d want children; she was young.

  But Minnie had never re-married. She devoted much of her free time to her sister’s and brother’s children, while supporting herself financially.

  He had never raised any of this with her; she had never spoken to him about her feelings.

  They walked in silence for a few moments, then Minnie said, ‘Once every three weeks or so, he’s gone for a day and a night.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Out of town. Heads off up the highway.’

  When Chris did not reply immediately, Minnie said, ‘It was your girl snooping around that back corridor.’

  Chris felt like denying that Anthea was, in any sense, his girl. He said, ‘Bobby had the run of the hotel until he did something to annoy your boss. Do you know what it was?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Here’s my problem, Min. I need a bunch of keys.’

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The rooms that faced the checkpoint had all been cleaned out. They were clear of dust, and no doubt fingerprints as well. Had Bobby been there? Chris felt next to certain that he had been.

  To make sure of the answer to another question, he walked over to the window and adjusted his binoculars so they brought the checkpoint close. Vehicle registration numbers were clearly readable and would be, night and day, underneath the powerful lights.

  Inside the cabin, a man wearing an orange reflective vest turned and said something to his companion, who laughed. The occupants of vehicles crossing the bridge could be identified as readily as these two sharing a joke to while away the time. Chris moved his binoculars to the security cameras, one on either side.

  He reflected that it was Griffin’s style to clean all four rooms meticulously, to leave whoever gained entry to them guessing as to which one had been used. None contained furniture, not even a forgotten chair.

  In the attic, Chris walked in his socks across floors it was apparent no human had stepped on in years, though generations of mice and rats had made the place their home. His torch picked out the remains of a dead sparrow in one corner. There was no furniture; the attic wasn’t being
used as storage space.

  Chris stared out the window at the police station on the hill. Under the moonlight, it looked both familiar and strange. His hunch that Griffin had his own agenda made more sense standing there — an agenda which might, or might not, dove-tail with that of the men in charge on Swan Island.

  He replaced the keys with a sharp feeling of regret. He hadn’t thought about those surf club dances for decades, and doubted whether Minnie had either; yet his memories, hooked and landed by just a few words, were remarkably fresh. He thought how futures were being decided on that dusty wooden floor, the kids all dancing in bare feet; anyone who came in shoes was ridiculed. Smart boys and girls from out of town quickly shed their shoes and were accepted. Chris had watched them from his position by the door, close to escape, though no one was forcing him to stay.

  He could only recall dancing on the rarest of occasions, yet Minnie had noticed and remembered them. At school and around the town, he’d been more or less left alone. You didn’t mess with him: he knew this was the assessment of the other boys. The girls were wary, rather than contemptuous. It would have been different if he’d been a surfer, or played football well. As to that last, he’d not been bad; fast in the centre, or on the wing. But his heart had not been in it. Sensing this, coaches had trained him up to a point, then chosen others.

  Chris was impressed by Minnie’s memory. It seemed to him that it was both capacious and deep; though, like many women, Minnie was skilled at pretending otherwise. He knew the harm his skulking round the Esplanade might do to her, yet he’d gone ahead.

  Some time soon, Chris knew he’d be required to choose between protecting the living and seeking justice for the dead. But not yet, he told himself, not yet.

  He knew that, were it not for Minnie, his next step would be to question Griffin. His career, even his safety, hardly weighed in the balance against such a step. But Minnie weighed, and Anthea, on the other side.

  Chris couldn’t get the picture out of his head — the way Minnie had looked at him side on, like an inquisitive bird. There’d always been something bird-like about her; all wings and curiosity and lightness; nothing like the glamour girls, yet she’d been more popular than any of them. It was the way she laughed and made you feel at ease, a way she had of smiling with her eyes. He’d watched from a distance how the boys lined up.

  He couldn’t bear the thought that Minnie might feel sorry for him, might look at him and see that, his testing time having finally arrived, he lacked the brains, or guts, or nerve. I’ve never been a hero, he might say, and she would look at him with her head on one side.

  Minnie made him feel as though he was fifteen again, propping up the surf club door. She made him want to shout and run. Yet where could he run to, when the test was here?

  A false step in any direction and Chris knew he would lose whatever small opportunities remained. Even minor matters, which he might have assumed the townspeople and surrounding farmers would take the trouble to report, he was obliged to draw out like splinters. Frank’s and Celia’s expressions had been identical as they’d watched him leave their property, identical in their undisguised relief. Now, he thought, they’ll pull a protective shell around themselves and stay out of town. If I go back, they’ll say they have nothing more to tell me.

  Chris knew he wouldn’t sleep if he went home, so he decided to call by the coastguard office. He was about twenty metres from the door when Tom Maloney came out, walked to the end of the small jetty and lit a cigarette.

  ‘All coastguard operations are directed from Melbourne,’ Tom said with his back to Chris. ‘What do they need me for, to listen to their conversations and make reports in triplicate?’

  Tom had been crying, and he didn’t care that Chris could see. Chris recalled that Tom had cried all through the funeral service. In the small light from his cigarette, his greying brown hair was unkempt, a lock falling over his forehead as he turned to blow smoke towards Swan Island.

  ‘Bobby was a curious child. That’s a cliché, isn’t it? All children are curious, at least they start off that way. By ten, most have had their curiosity knocked out of them.’

  Chris was wary of coming too close, as though Tom might decide to take a header off the jetty.

  ‘Max was barely old enough to leave his Mum when Bobby found him. Tossed out of a car on the Geelong road. Left to die unless he was rescued. Well, Bobby did that.’

  Chris waited, knowing better than to interrupt.

  ‘Bobby needed somewhere for the pup to stay until he broke the news at home. I gave him a blanket and a couple of bowls. He used my tap for water.’

  ‘How long did Max live underneath your office?’

  ‘Six months, give or take a week. Bobby tried to bribe his Dad with money. Of course the bastard took it.’

  Tom stared out over the bay. Lights shone from buildings on the island. Chris was suddenly sure that the coastguard officer could have found his way to any of them blindfolded.

  ‘Where’s the money now, Tom?’

  ‘Bobby never told me. Do you think I would have asked him that?’

  Once again, Chris waited. Tom said, ‘That blanket and some comics. I gave him books to read. He was a reader, Bobby. You’d not think it, considering how little time he spent at school.’

  ‘Did you see Olly walking Bobby home the night he was killed?’

  ‘So he killed Bobby, Olly Parkinson?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Why the hell does it matter what I think?’ Tom glanced back at Chris dismissively. ‘They’ve got evidence then, the inspector and his sergeants? Must have, I suppose.’ In Tom’s glance, suspicion and contempt were mixed. ‘That Sergeant Shaw’s a piece of work,’ he said.

  ‘Did you hear a dog bark that night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about under your office two nights ago?’

  ‘Wasn’t there.’

  Would Tom care if Olly were convicted? Would he be relieved, even pleased?

  Tom had been born in Queenscliff, son of a local carpenter. He’d nursed his father in his last illness, just as Chris had nursed his mother. Chris had never felt that this made for a bond between them. He recalled that most of the locals he’d spoken to as he went from house to house, had wanted to think well of Olly. They didn’t want to think that a paedophile and child killer had been living amongst them. Many of them had seen Olly and Bobby together on the bay, or walking with Max. Quite a few admitted to knowing about Bobby’s friendship with the coastguard officer as well.

  ‘Tell me about Bobby,’ Chris said.

  Tom patted his shirt pocket, then apparently changed his mind about another smoke.

  Most of what he touched on was known to Chris already. It was the emphasis Tom gave to facts that was subtly different. Tom underlined the extent to which Bobby had been an opportunist, making use of whoever came his way. He didn’t hesitate to include himself in this.

  The coastguard office had been searched, and Tom’s fingerprints taken. He reacted indifferently to this, but the recollection of Shaw’s words made him angry again.

  Chris could imagine how the sergeant would have insinuated that Tom might be a paedophile — casually, with a knowing smile.

  ‘Did Bobby ever borrow an oilskin off you, Tom? A scrap of oilskin maybe?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he tell you where he moved the money to?’

  ‘I already answered that.’

  ‘Think carefully. Did you hear anything that night, anything at all?’

  After a long silence, Tom said, ‘I might have heard someone on the water.’

  ‘A boat?’

  ‘An oar. I could have been mistaken.’

  ‘A paddle?’

  ‘Who’d be paddling round in the pitch dark?’

  ‘Did you tell Sergeant Shaw?’

  ‘Sergeant Shaw was too busy insulting me,’ Tom said. ‘Truth is, I don’t know. I went outside for a piss. Might have been half eight. I didn’t
check the time.’

  So Tom had gone outside after all, the night Bobby was killed. The admission didn’t seem to bother him.

  ‘Someone paddling,’ Chris prompted.

  ‘Do you really believe that if I thought that kid was in danger, I’d have sat there on my —’

  Chris said quietly, ‘You knew he was in trouble, Tom.’

  ‘But then, just then! God damn you!’

  Tom pulled out his cigarettes with a defiant gesture.

  ‘Whatever business Bobby had at the hotel, it was his business. It was private. Bobby had a right to privacy. I couldn’t give him much, but I could give him that. Ghosts, Blackie,’ he said, as though Chris had asked specifically about them. ‘Ghosts are what brings me out when honest men are asleep in their beds. Same as you.’

  The sight of that small curved body returned to Chris as he left Tom lighting up again, a body unharmed except for a red mark round the neck. No skin had been found under Bobby’s nails, but, being the kind of boy he was, outside in all weathers, and with few clothes to his name, those he had been wearing were an encyclopaedia of seeds and grasses, sand and dirt.

  Bobby had used Tom, Chris reflected, the way he seemed to have used all of the adults he came into contact with. How long had it taken Tom to work this out and what had the realisation meant to him? The fact that Tom was grieving now did not mean that he was innocent. And he’d lied about being outside. When first asked about it, he’d said no.

  That night, Chris dreamt of Minnie swathed in red. Red stripes hung down from the top of her head to below her knees, not flowing, but somehow painted on. It seemed to Chris that the stripes must be blood, yet they weren’t liquid. When they turned into a kelp house, a house of seaweed dyed red, moving as though underwater, Chris woke up hot, the bedclothes in a tangle.

  He got up shivering, his legs flabby, disobedient, and stood in front of the bathroom mirror. His pyjamas felt sodden, as though he’d fished them from a bloated stream. Streaks and swathes of red — the after-image, the image disappearing — hung about his head. They slipped and slithered down. He blinked. They were almost gone, and then, finally, they were.