The Swan Island Connection

by Dorothy Johnston

  Either the dead man’s wallet and phone had been on him and had fallen, or been tossed out, or else they were in his car. Of course he might not have brought a phone or wallet with him. There was another possibility, which was that he’d walked, or run to the pier, instead of driving, but Chris thought this unlikely.

  There was a small green Hyundai at the far end of the carpark, the inside of which looked abnormally clean, certainly far too clean for a fisherman. Chris tried the doors. The car was empty, so far as Chris could see. The rego plates had no coloured stripe along the side. Chris wrote down the number, then walked around the car, peering in, trying to recall if he’d seen it parked outside the Esplanade.

  He remembered the exercise of dropping SAS trainees outside the heads, making them swim back to shore. If you understood the currents, were an exceptionally strong swimmer and kept your nerve, you’d come out of it all right.

  Things went wrong, but he didn’t think this troubled the organisers all that much. The exercise was timed for the flood tide; at ebb tide, swimmers could be half way to Tasmania before their bodies were recovered, if they ever were.

  The tide turned and began to flow out quickly. Had the man been aware of the tide times; had he known he’d be swept inside the bay, perhaps been counting on this? If it wasn’t suicide, where had he been going? Had he been planning to swim across to the Mornington Peninsula, and having reached the shore there, disappear?

  Chris’s phone rang: Tom again. He was taking the body to Queenscliff to be transferred to an ambulance; better than bringing it up onto the Lonsdale front beach in front of a crowd of sightseers.

  When Chris asked Tom about a mobile phone, he said he’d checked the pockets three times and they were empty except for the keys.

  The Point Lonsdale lighthouse was one of the few in Australia kept permanently manned. Whoever was up there might have seen something, though not a watcher keeping to the bushes directly beneath.

  The carpark was filling up. People lined the viewing platform next to the lighthouse, as they did when an unusually large ship was coming through the heads. Chris recalled a few lines from a book he’d read once, about the dead coming back to watch the living, standing with quiet faces, unable to do more than that. There was no disrespect in it. Still, he would have liked to tell them to go home.

  In the normal run of things, Chris did not mind Anthea’s silences. Indeed, it was only now, when her silence made him apprehensive, that he wanted her to talk. He missed their old, companionable silences, when they did not need to make urgent decisions which would probably turn out to be wrong. He missed the unhurried way their understanding had developed. He wondered if the loss was felt only on his side.

  Chris was full of questions, but felt constrained from voicing them aloud. An image came to him of trying to bucket water with his hands. Then his hands became transparent and the water began rushing through them. No, he must, and would, shut out all thoughts of that kind.

  Inspector Ferguson would have made a good traffic cop, Chris thought. A ten car pile-up wouldn’t have bothered him. He would regard the wreckage and the blood with equanimity.

  ‘Get statements from all the fishermen. Signed.’

  Chris thought that there were worse tasks to be given: conferring a privilege was how the inspector made it sound.

  A clap of waves, sudden and ear-splitting, filled Chris’s head. He thought of his beloved Murray, of the banks at Swan Hill where he’d first come to know the river. He thought of the deaths of small creatures; unnumbered, unrecorded, occurring every minute of the day, and how all attempts to create a sanctuary were forfeit.

  Then he remembered Minnie — Minnie’s red-gold hair and smile, how she’d smiled in the darkness when she’d told him he was a good dancer.

  THIRTY-ONE

  Joe’s truck was parked in his driveway, battered and rusting, stinking of fish.

  The fisherman took a long time to read through his statement, while Ida, his wife, sat at the kitchen table helping him. It was apparent that Joe wasn’t much of a reader. Chris was struck by the unexpected dignity of the picture, the couple’s shoulders not quite touching, white hair on one side, steel grey on the other.

  Apart from the colour of their hair, they’d grown to look alike, or perhaps had always had this similarity of shape and demeanour — mild, yet you wouldn’t cross them, or force them to do anything they had not already made up their minds to do. Chris had never seen his parents in accord like that.

  He sat patiently, hoping to indicate that he wasn’t in any kind of hurry. His jacket itched, and he fancied that it smelt of damp wool, but when he surreptitiously raised his wrist and sniffed, he could not smell anything, neither his own skin nor the fabric.

  Joe and Ida glanced at one another, then fixed their eyes on him. If either of them had suspected a trick of some kind, in which they must become entangled, then Chris could read relief in their expressions.

  He took Joe back over the morning’s events, asking again if he’d seen the dead man before. Joe’s answer was emphatic. He repeated that no one had been chasing him.

  ‘Tore out to the end and jumped off. That was it.’

  ‘But you would have looked back, Joe.’

  ‘We were looking at him.’ Joe frowned and shook his head. ‘I never was a swimmer. Never got taught as a youngster.’

  ‘Did the man throw anything into the water?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘His phone?’

  ‘Not that I saw. No,’ Joe said, making up his mind.

  ‘Which way did he swim?’

  ‘Straight out.’

  ‘Towards Point Nepean?’

  ‘On a calm day, he might have made it.’

  ‘He was a strong swimmer?’

  ‘Top class. And used to swimming in the ocean by the look of him.’

  ‘What about his shoes?’

  Joe frowned again. ‘He wasn’t wearing any.’

  ‘He ran along the pier barefoot?’

  ‘Yes, and he just had a shirt on. Shirt and trousers I mean. No jacket or jumper.’

  So he’d made up his mind while he was driving, Chris thought. But why not leave his shoes and socks in the car? Maybe they were in the boot.

  When Chris introduced the subject of onlookers, Joe commented that death always brought a crowd.

  ‘You’ve seen other drownings?’

  ‘No,’ Joe’s wife answered for him. ‘Thanks be to God for that.’

  Chris continued asking questions, watching Joe’s reaction. He drew the fisherman back, by degrees, to the pier over the last couple of weeks. Had Joe noticed a man with a limp walking a German Shepherd?

  At first Joe didn’t think he had, but then his memory cleared. The dog had been striking to look at. You saw a few German Shepherds about, but not all that many. Golden Retrievers, now, were two a penny. And the man? He hadn’t been young, but not that old either. He’d had a limp, though he was fast with it. Joe described the way man and dog had paced themselves.

  ‘He didn’t let him off the lead?’

  ‘Not while I was watching. Not in sight of the pier.’

  When Ida asked why this was important, Chris said, ‘Whatever helps us build up a background can be useful.’

  ‘Do you think he committed suicide?’ she asked.

  Joe looked at his wife in alarm, while Chris replied calmly, ‘It’s too soon to say.’

  Ida stood up and walked over to the window. Her back was eloquent and Chris knew she wanted him to leave. He also saw that something was bothering her, but she wasn’t going to bring it up in front of her husband.

  The older people got, the more they thought about death. That made him an anomaly then, because he’d been thinking about it since he was twenty-five.

  ‘What about boats?’ he asked.

  Joe took his time before replying, while his wife went on staring out the window.

  ‘Over Mornington way. If there’d been one close enough, it wou
ld’ve picked him up.’

  Ida returned to the table and laid her right hand gently over her husband’s.

  ‘Ewan threw his bucket,’ Joe said. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  More than one fishing boat, Chris thought, but too far away. He was pretty sure he knew where the young man had come from, but did not think that he’d set out with the intention of driving to Point Lonsdale pier. At some point, he’d realised that he was being followed and changed direction, changed his plans. Perhaps he’d used his phone to ring someone, that phone which was probably now caught in the kelp somewhere, or on the bottom of Port Phillip Bay.

  Ida said quietly but firmly, ‘You’ve got your statement, Constable Blackie. Please leave us alone now.’

  Ewan Regati shook Chris’s hand. He looked lost, Chris thought, without Joe to speak for him.

  Chris began his questions simply, asking Ewan when he’d arrived at the pier and where he’d parked, what the weather had been like.

  The fisherman, who was probably in his forties but looked older, lost a little of his apprehension. He sat with his hands folded in his lap and avoided catching Chris’s eye. In order to get the job done as quickly as possible, Chris and Anthea had divided the group between them.

  When Chris asked about the bucket, Ewan said, ‘They should replace the lifebelt. It’s a disgrace.’

  ‘Why do you think the young man drowned?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Ewan looked alarmed.

  ‘He was young, a strong swimmer.’

  ‘Maybe got caught in the kelp.’

  ‘You were watching.’

  ‘Couldn’t see much, in that swell.’

  ‘You would have looked to see if there was anybody else,’ Chris said.

  ‘Chasing the poor blighter? I never went to the carpark. Do you think I should of?’

  ‘You did what you could, Ewan. If he was being chased or followed, we’ll find out.’

  Chris had no idea why he’d said that, but it felt like a promise he would keep. Anger was beginning to take the place of confusion, his anger over Bobby coming back in waves.

  The 000 call, the decision about who would make it, the bit of fumbling and the time lost: the fishermen had all been facing the sea, and what the sea was in the act of swallowing. None could swear that there’d been no one on the approach to the pier, or beneath the lighthouse, but they all said he wasn’t being chased. They’d stayed together under the shelter until Anthea arrived. They wanted to know the dead man’s name; they felt bad that they had no name to call him by.

  Chris wasn’t sure the name would be released. Had his friends followed him, or tried to? Joe had seen Griffin with the German Shepherd, but that might be a co-incidence. Chris told himself that, for all he knew, Griffin regularly exercised the dog at Point Lonsdale. It was no more than a ten minute drive from the Esplanade.

  He thought about how to get Ida on her own. She might shut the door on him if he returned without an excuse, no sheet of paper requiring a signature. He’d seen the glint — it was metallic, owing its place to something that resisted corrosion — at the backs of her eyes.

  Chris recalled the cowboy movies of his boyhood, the Apache chief outlined against the sky, the vantage point from which all possible escape routes could be seen. He pictured Griffin in his eyrie, knowing he was letting his imagination run away with him, yet with a growing core of certainty.

  Jumping off that pier may have been, not an act of idiocy, but one showing courage and presence of mind. Another way to look at it was that courage and stupidity went hand in hand.

  The door to the front office remained shut. Chris wondered how complacent Inspector Ferguson was feeling now. He gave every appearance of being in control, but since that had been a lie from the beginning, all he had to do was keep his mask in place. Chris told himself he shouldn’t be so cynical, then thought, damn it, he had every right to be.

  Shaw’s smile had been switched off, Chris noted, when the sergeant came through to the kitchen to make coffee. It had been replaced by a more ordinary expression of bad temper. Shaw ignored Anthea and she ignored him; Chris hoped it would stay that way.

  He delivered the fishermen’s signed statements and received no more than a nod from Sergeant Haverley, whose attention remained fixed on his computer screen.

  Anthea was pale and solemn; there were deep purple circles underneath her eyes. The two constables spoke little. Neither suggested taking their tea out to the middle of the lawn.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Ida confounded Chris by welcoming him with a smile. Joe had gone fishing. ‘It’s good for him,’ she said.

  Chris spoke to Ida frankly and directly. He saw her as a woman whose surface calm was willed and did not come naturally. He thought again of Minnie and wondered what Minnie was doing at that moment. Was she at work? Was Griffin watching everything she did?

  Ida had gone out for a walk one night, an overcast, moonless night — it had been about a month ago — with the lighthouse beam flooding the pier and surrounding rocks. Joe had been visiting his sister. She’d seen a fishing boat come in between the pier and lighthouse, and remembered wondering what it was doing there. Though anchorage might be safe enough at low tide, within an hour the swell would begin to build.

  A man had appeared from behind the bushes and had waded out to the boat.

  ‘It was so calm. I remember thinking how most nights, even at low tide, it wouldn’t have been safe.’

  Which is why they must have other means of meeting, Chris said to himself.

  The man had climbed on board. Ida had heard voices, but had not made out any words.

  ‘What about a dog?’ Chris asked.

  Ida thought carefully before replying, ‘I didn’t hear a dog, or see any sign of one.’

  ‘Did the man have a limp?’

  ‘I don’t know. I saw shapes and shadows, that’s all.’ Ida was silent for a moment before correcting herself. ‘The beam, the lighthouse beam, it lit the boat up once when the man was wading out to it. Now I think about it, there was something unbalanced about the way he moved.’

  When Chris asked which direction the boat had come from, Ida shook her head. ‘That man, the one who waded out, he was only on board for a few minutes.’

  ‘Where did he go after that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I decided to go home. I did hear a car start up but —’

  Ida hesitated. Chris thought he understood. She’d stayed away from the road because she’d suspected that something untoward was happening; she hadn’t wanted to be seen.

  ‘If I’d known it was going to be important —’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Chris said, and thanked her. ‘Have you seen the man again?’

  Ida hadn’t gone walking at night since then, and was glad she hadn’t. Chris wanted to warn her; but against what, exactly?

  ‘If anyone wants to know what I was doing here, say I was asking after Joe.’

  Chris sat in his car and thought. Someone else might have seen the boat come in; he didn’t think it was the first time such a rendezvous had been arranged. The lighthouse keeper would be worth questioning. He felt remiss for not having got around to it before.

  Chris felt confident he could explain a return visit to Joe’s place, but not to the lighthouse. Would it be better to wait till after nightfall? Having got away with so many irregularities made him feel light-headed, but then of course he didn’t really believe he’d got away with them.

  Was it possible that the man had been told to jump off the pier, re-assured that he’d be picked up? But then, why had he thrown away his phone and wallet, if in fact he’d done so?

  If the fishermen were telling the truth, none of the boats had come anywhere near him. Rescue had never been intended. Perhaps whoever chased him had been watching through binoculars, to make sure he drowned.

  The lighthouse keeper had seen the lights of fishing boats close to the pier on a number of occasions. He couldn’t be sure if it was the same boat each time, a
nd was vague as to the dates, though he recalled thinking that the boats came very close to shore. He hadn’t seen anybody wading out. Barking dogs he never took particular notice of; there was always a dog barking somewhere.

  After leaving the lighthouse, Chris decided to take another look at the pier.

  The seal was still there, or possibly another young one, weaving in and out between the pylons, breathing when it needed to; but this, the mammal’s breathing, seemed also to be a kind of play, effortless in the swell, which gained strength in the time it took Chris to reach the shelter at the end. He did not think about his vertigo, his dread; just then, it seemed as though they might belong to another person.

  He looked down at the foul-smelling wood, the railing and the pylons, breathing in deeply, then again. He wondered where Ewan’s bucket was, where it had ended up. There was no ladder, such as his own pier at Queenscliff had; nothing to encourage jumping and climbing back; everything to discourage it, in fact.

  The seal went on spinning beneath him. Chris knew it was the belief of some northern peoples that the soul of a drowned man returned in the form of a seal. He thought that he would like to find out more about that when he had the time. The seal rolled over on his back; it seemed to Chris that he was smiling.

  The tide was almost at the flood now. The youngster rose and pirouetted in his element, outlined clearly for perhaps three seconds, then diving between the sharp, weed-covered rocks. How graceful! And there, another breath of air, and in a few moments another. An ordinary tide, the big tide of the approaching equinox, but predictable for those who knew its ways. Storms had blown up and would again, when waves rose right up over the end of the pier, and even a person clutching the railing for dear life would not be safe.

  Chris had been taken out to the local seal colony on a school trip once: it was a non-breeding colony, made up of young males and older rejects, who went off to try their luck with the females in November and returned bloody and battle-torn. No doubt each year there were some who never made it, taken by sharks or killer whales, or just too badly injured to complete the swim. Then there were these boys, arriving after their mothers had kicked them out. Did this one have any idea what lay ahead of him? Perhaps he’d be lucky and grow to command a harem. Was future success inherent in his easy flipping to and fro, his mastery of the element that had just taken a man’s life?