The Swan Island Connection

by Dorothy Johnston

  Where did Yates and his escape attempt fit in? Had murder stuck in Yates’s throat? Had he panicked? Would Yates have linked Griffin to Bobby’s murder? Perhaps he’d bought the story that Olly was a paedophile. Had Yates been tasked with getting rid of the last of the cocaine? But why that way, Chris asked himself again. Why not just empty it into the bay?

  Strangling Bobby with Max’s lead pointed the finger directly at Olly, therefore the killer, if not Olly himself, had to be someone who knew where the lead was kept, and how to get hold of it quickly. This discounted the soldiers, unless one of them was already on the mainland, watching while Olly walked Bobby home. Chris had not forgotten the splash of oars or paddles Tom had heard, or thought he’d heard.

  The trainees were shut up on their island fastness. Stellar’s group could well be facing court marshal followed by dismissal, all of which would be kept quiet.

  ‘I never thought I’d enjoy flying under the radar,’ Anthea said, surprising Chris and making him turn swiftly to look at her.

  Yes, that glitter was a tear. ‘They can stop us any time,’ she said, ‘but let’s make the rest of today and this evening count if we can.’

  ‘A deal,’ Chris said with a smile.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Minnie was standing in front of the poker machines. The light that made it easy for the gamblers to keep feeding coins picked out the cut above her eyebrow, the bruises on her cheek. Minnie looked grotesque, like one of the gargoyle images on the machines themselves.

  On the other side of the window, Chris opened his mouth to speak.

  Minnie put her finger to her lips and frowned.

  Chris held up his hand. In response to this, or perhaps to a sound he couldn’t hear, Minnie turned and quickly left the gaming room.

  She wouldn’t let him nurse, or fuss over her. Her expression told him it was too late for that.

  ‘It’s better if I keep turning up at work.’

  Better for whom? Chris wondered. Better for Griffin, who could see his handywork displayed, who could keep her under his eye? But Griffin knew where to find Minnie whenever he liked.

  Chris suggested that she should go and stay with her sister in Albury.

  Instead of replying, Minnie stared at him, open-eyed. Other women would cover up the bruises and the cut, Chris thought. Other women would have reported Griffin. The fact that Minnie hadn’t meant that she did not believe he could help her.

  Forbidden to get busy with a warm cloth and bandaids, Chris sat with an untouched mug of tea in front of him.

  ‘I can’t involve my sister,’ Minnie said at last. ‘And he’s given me his warning.’

  ‘How —’

  ‘I was walking home.’

  ‘You mustn’t do that.’

  Minnie made a complicated face. ‘I was trying to tell you what happened. He came up behind me. I didn’t see him. I could never prove that it was him. He didn’t speak and he didn’t want to hurt me badly, just to warn me.’

  Chris felt worse than useless. He shouldn’t have stood outside that gaming room window, shouldn’t have met Minnie under the gum tree that night she’d told him he was a good dancer. He shouldn’t be talking to her now.

  He felt that the very act of breathing in and out contaminated those around him, whom he cared for and wanted to protect.

  Minnie went her own way; she had always done so.

  Chris mustered his most reasonable voice and listed a few precautions she could take, ways of keeping herself as safe as possible in the circumstances.

  ‘What did you tell people?’ he asked.

  ‘That I ran into a door.’

  ‘But they know, the rest of the staff?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And they’re frightened of him?’

  Instead of replying directly, Minnie raised a red-gold eyebrow. ‘You know, I remembered something,’ she said. ‘I remembered when I was in third grade. In those days, families lived on the island as well.’

  Chris nodded, understanding the distinction.

  ‘Do you remember Sylvia Watson? She was a friendly girl, though of course they were a cut above. She was sent to a posh boarding school in Melbourne and I know she was lonely at first because she wrote to me.’

  Minnie frowned at her memories, while Chris nodded again.

  ‘Before she left to go to boarding school, Sylvia had a party and invited some girls from our class. They sent a car to fetch us. I was nervous because I didn’t have a party dress, and Mum wasn’t going to outlay an expense like that. I borrowed a dress from one of my cousins.’

  Minnie looked over Chris’s shoulder as though she’d heard a noise.

  ‘What is it?’

  They both listened for a moment, then Minnie said, ‘Nothing, I guess. It was very grand, the party, and we had a good time. They had these big tables set out on the lawn, and French windows leading out to them, though I didn’t know they were called French windows then. We had games and a piñata. I’d never heard of such a thing. After that, we all went for a walk. We were told where we could go and where we couldn’t, and of course Sylvia was with us. The strap on my sandal broke and I got left behind. There was a soldier in the bushes by the boundary fence, dressed like in the war. He was lying flat on the ground and holding a machine gun.’

  Chris understood that Minnie had been curious, rather than scared.

  ‘Did you say anything to Sylvia?’

  ‘No. I knew I wasn’t supposed to have seen him.’

  Before Chris could ask another question, Minnie said, ‘Sometimes the lessons we learn as kids last all our lives.’

  ‘And sometimes they don’t. Sometimes we grow out of them.’

  Chris wondered if they’d made eye contact, the small girl and the embarrassed young man on his belly, who had not been good at hiding.

  He checked Minnie’s doors and windows before he said goodbye. She told him not to fuss, but in the tone of voice that suggested she was grateful for his show of concern. When he said she should think of somewhere else she could go, if she didn’t want to involve her sister, she told him that she was too old to run away.

  That soldier, that long-ago trainee, would have watched the children pass, perhaps surprised at the girls in their fine dresses, perhaps bored and indifferent. Once Minnie had spotted him, he might have been concerned that she would scream, or in some other way raise the alarm. Perhaps it had been her silence that drew his eyes up to meet hers.

  Chris sat in his own kitchen and thought how Minnie considered him redundant, both as a man and a police officer. The fact that he considered himself redundant half of the time did not make her judgment easier to bear. What was the point of nostalgic memories when he was failing her in the here and now?

  He told himself he needed to find Bobby’s hiding place, and cursed himself for not having persisted with his search.

  Max sniffed and pricked up his ears when they passed a Golden Retriever on the opposite side of the road, the bitch plumy-tailed and portly, its owner well-fed too.

  Chris found himself smiling down at Max. ‘Out of your class,’ he said.

  Talking to Max was a comfort and a pleasure, so he kept it up. ‘You know what we’re looking for, don’t you?’

  Chris cocked his head towards a clump of low-browed coastal trees which were supposed to be regenerating. Max wagged his tail, studied the roots of the Moonah, sniffed again.

  Without warning, they were there, blocking the path ahead.

  Max stiffened. The German Shepherd, masculine, imperious, did not slacken its pace. Man and dog seemed almost one, in pacing and in length of stride, the man’s limp scarcely noticeable.

  Griffin held the lead loosely. Chris nodded a greeting. For once, he was grateful for his uniform, its solidity and the way it covered him. He knew that Griffin was used to uniforms, having for many years worn one himself.

  They exchanged a look in which Chris’s understanding of this much was conveyed, while scorn and condescension jostled for pl
aces on the hotel manager’s face.

  ‘It’s a good view from up here,’ Chris said, noticing how Max, after his first cautious reaction, wagged his tail, and the German Shepherd greeted him back.

  Griffin inclined his head, then began to speak about the bikers who came roaring up from the ferry in convoys of thirty or more, how at night the lights from their bikes reflected brilliant metal, riders hidden under black leather and helmets, how the noise made him feel as though he was living in a city.

  ‘Good customers?’ Chris asked when the hotel manager paused for breath.

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘You were a dog handler in the army,’ Chris said quietly. ‘You were injured when your dog set off a mine. You couldn’t watch him die in agony. You went after him.’

  Griffin’s expression took on a different, speculative air. ‘Congratulations, constable. I’m sure you too have memories that you would rather not re-visit.’

  Of course a man like Griffin would know the story of his father’s miserable heroics.

  ‘This is what struck me as odd,’ Chris said. ‘An army dog handler with a limp, that isn’t an impossibility. Yours wasn’t a combat role.’

  ‘I lost the taste for it.’

  ‘Your dog died?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of injuries that could have been prevented.’

  ‘He had a job to do. He did it.’

  ‘Was Edward Yates good with dogs?’

  ‘In my experience, many soldiers have an affinity with them.’

  Chris had no wish to argue the point. He was used to being discounted and dismissed; he’d got used to it, as the man confronting him had not. Griffin would never accept that he was yesterday’s man. He’d think it a black mark against him if he didn’t know more than a police detective, and far more than an ordinary constable.

  Chris said, ‘Yates thought he could make it to the other side.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time one of them over-estimated his ability.’

  ‘He was running away from you.’

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because you’d threatened him.’

  ‘Good luck, Constable Blackie.’

  Griffin smiled, swung on his good leg, and was gone.

  Chris let Max sniff where he would.

  ‘I’m an idiot,’ he said aloud, and then, ‘Never mind.’

  He decided that he could go ahead with the first step anyway, since he was sure Griffin had already searched underneath the coastguard office.

  A wind sprang up and bent the marram grass; not strong enough to flatten it, but there was something in the wind, light as it still was, which might work itself up into a proper blow. Chris walked close to Max, who looked up at him with unwavering brown eyes.

  When the dog ran off, Chris wondered if he’d made a mistake. He didn’t want to have to chase him all the way to Olly’s, or worse, to Bobby’s house.

  Max came back looking pleased, his long mouth pursed like a child’s around a sweet.

  ‘What have you got there?’

  It was a bit of old, long-buried bone.

  Chris re-fastened Max’s lead and headed for the foreshore, reflecting that Griffin liked the covert world, and enjoyed playing his own part in it. The look on his face just now had been cruel, yet caressing. If the hotel manager had stuck to trading information, he might still be doing so in a quiet, uninterrupted fashion.

  Chris walked to the coastguard office, knowing he could be seen from the checkpoint and the island. He could have waited until dark, but what was the point, when his movements could be observed night and day? He thought of memories that existed in a bubble, never allowed to flow out into the future, and of the choices Bobby McGilvrey had made. The boy had surely not realised the danger he’d been in; but maybe this was a false assessment. Maybe all of Bobby’s choices had been made with open eyes.

  Griffin would have made himself approachable, would probably have made Bobby’s acquaintance, in the first instance, through the dogs. He would have shown an interest in Max; it would have happened naturally, or with the appearance of being natural.

  Bobby would have responded well to the suggestion that he might like to earn a bit of money. A boy who, old for his age in some things, vulnerable in others, who understood the need for secrets, would have been easy to enlist.

  Chris cast his mind back to what it felt like to be a solitary ten-year-old, one whose territory looked large, yet was, from an adult perspective, severely limited. His cache would have to be somewhere waterproof, above the reach of even the king tides, and not likely to be stumbled on by chance. He would need to visit it whenever there was money to deposit. Knowing his father, he couldn’t afford to keep cash in the house for more than a night at the most.

  He was relying on Max’s nose and memory. He’d revised his earlier opinion, and now believed no human knew the whereabouts of Bobby’s hiding place; except perhaps for Griffin, who was laughing at him now.

  When Chris stopped, Max sat upright at his heels. Tom’s car wasn’t parked outside the office, and the door was locked. Chris undid the lead again, then bent down and made his way underneath the building, indicating to Max that he should follow, and trying to move forward in a crouching position without dirtying his clothes or bumping his head. He picked up the frayed blanket, thankful it was still there, and held it out to Max, who sniffed at it once, twice, three times, then looked at Chris with an expression which said: well?

  ‘We’ve come this far,’ Chris said. ‘Tonight we’re going to give it another try.’

  He’d passed on to that stage of fatigue where troubles had a lighter, icy touch. He wondered if it was possible to sleep standing up, to catch sleep, as it were, unawares. He walked home, telling himself that he should eat and rest. He did not believe that vigilance was usually rewarded. The word derived from the same root as vigil. Chris knew quite a bit about vigils and the keeping of them. Close acquaintance had not changed his mind.

  They set off along the railway line shortly after ten o’clock, Max keeping up a steady pace. The open ground meant that Chris didn’t need to use his torch. He put aside the thought that Griffin had most likely found whatever there was to find.

  Max turned left, heading up the slope. Chris had to crouch low underneath the Moonah; there was no proper path. He did switch on his torch then, pointing it down at his feet. Max looked back once over his shoulder, then continued climbing.

  The dog stopped three-quarters of the way up the rise, beside a couple of acacias almost completely covered by exotic creepers. He sat down, back straight and ears erect.

  Underneath one of the acacias, well buried beneath leaf litter and twigs, Chris found a hollow he would never have unearthed on his own. After pulling on a pair of latex gloves, he removed a sealed plastic bag of money, then another one containing a book.

  There is a joy in simple pleasures, simple movements, that is never to be counted on. If anticipated, it tends not to turn up. But this was Chris’s joy as he hurried back down the embankment with his prize. From time to time he slipped, glancing at the bulge under his jacket, and thinking that he would make a hopeless shoplifter. Anthea would make a better one. Anthea knew when to keep her mouth shut, a quality he prized and which he could not have taught her.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  It was a Collins diary, black, hard-covered. You could buy them at the newsagent’s for about four dollars. Every page had the date printed at the top and a single page allowed, except for Saturday and Sunday. It seemed that Bobby had written on them all, until the day before he died.

  Chris set the diary down on his kitchen table and brewed a pot of tea. He’d closed all the curtains and locked both door and windows, but still his house felt unsafe.

  Most of the entries seemed to be a record of payments. Griffin’s name was represented by the single letter G.

  Chris scrolled back and found the attack on the dolphin.

  On river 2PM. Stuart, Simon, Jason and
Damien had Mr Hocking’s boat. Doing donuts. Dolphin couldn’t break free. I paddled out and was able to make use of surprise factor. Dolphin able to make use of the diversion.

  Bobby’s handwriting was neat. The attack on Max was contained in a few short sentences.

  Constable Blackie heard Max barking. Saved him from the gang. Had to wash the petrol off him. Okay now. Constable Blackie wrote out a report for me to sign.

  Then a few days later: Explained to Max that he’d have to stay at Olly’s for a while. He understands. Max is a good dog.

  The entries after that referred to visiting Max after school and the meals Olly had cooked; there were occasional mentions of school, one of visiting Tom at the coastguard office, but none of having his photograph taken. The four protesters appeared, unnamed, but Stellar was referred to every other day for a month.

  ‘I remember keeping a diary at that age,’ Anthea looked up from her reading to say. ‘There was a girl at school I was jealous of, and another one I hated. I remember writing about them.’

  ‘But that’s just what Bobby doesn’t do,’ Chris pointed out. ‘It’s a log book, an account book. Mainly.’

  While waiting for Anthea, Chris had thought about each of the events referred to in the diary. He’d speculated about blackmail. If Bobby had been blackmailing Griffin, there was no evidence of it. The sums of money did not increase. What if Bobby had been blackmailing one or more of the trainees?

  One day, when he had time, Chris thought he’d tell Anthea about searching above the railway line for Benito’s treasure when he was a boy, how the search had occupied him for an entire summer. He doubted whether the current generation of kids even knew the legend of Benito the pirate and his stolen gold.

  He thought about success and failure, how differently each might be measured.

  When Anthea said, ‘Will you take it to inspector Ferguson?’ Chris hesitated and then shook his head.