Show Me The Sky

by Nicholas Hogg

  Now I have a lead, a bite, the fish tugging at the hook, I need help to haul him in. Whoever he is.

  I walk the clean, immaculate streets downtown, and ask for directions to the nearest Internet café.

  From: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  To: anna.monroe@metpolice.gov.uk

  Date: Wed 18 Jan 2005 15:27 + 1300

  Please reply via a private email account, on an external, non-MET network.

  From: anna_m@hotmail.com

  To: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  Date: Wed 18 Jan 2005 15:59 + 1300

  Reply as requested. Who is this?

  From: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  To: anna_m@hotmail.com

  Date: Wed 18 Jan 2005 16:22 + 1300

  To confirm this is Ms Monroe, could you tell me what you ate for breakfast on the morning of 16 Sept?

  From: anna_m@hotmail.com

  To: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  Date: Wed 18 Jan 2005 17:09 + 1300

  Toast, cut off a loaf from the bakery café downstairs, with strawberry jam spread on top.

  Jim?

  From: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  To: anna_m@hotmail.com

  Date: Wed 18 Jan 2005 17:21 + 1300

  Who else? The man who fetched you that loaf. I’m OK, Anna. You know me well enough to know this much. I hope.

  Might need your help soon. What’s the fallout in London?

  Sorry to have worried you. So much to tell you, not least how much I miss you.

  From: anna_m@hotmail.com

  To: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  Date: Wed 18 Jan 2005 17:48 + 1300

  Worried?! I’ve been worried sick. Really, to just vanish in transit like that! I don’t know what you’re up to, but you could’ve told me something.

  Roberts had us in his office the moment we were through customs. He really put the boot in. Surprised you didn’t hear him bellowing, even in Australia. Then I was personally summoned for ‘a little chat’. Not quite an interrogation, but warnings of reprimands and the CPS if you were to contact me and I didn’t pass on any information. He even did a good cop, bad cop routine, starting with concerns about your mental health, telling me he understood the pressures of the job, of failing on such a high profile case, before pushing the threats of a disciplinary.

  And I am worried about you, Jim. But remember, I’m here. Call me on my cell, or give me a number I can reach you on there. Is your mobile switched off?

  Please write soon,

  xx

  From: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  To: anna_m@hotmail.com

  Date: Wed 18 Jan 2005 18:11 + 1300

  Anna, I can’t call you because … You’d probably talk me out of what I’m doing. I have a lead. Maybe. And that could be a big maybe. One way of checking it out is if you could pay a trip for me to the London Mission Society records in Russell Square. Check whether the name Patrick McCreedy is connected with the Reverend Thomas. Turns out the Cal Smith guy who found the manuscript discovered more than just a journal buried in the sand. His ex-girlfriend, a Monique Cabanne, now living in Coober Pedy, told me he ‘saw’ this man called McCreedy.

  Now, if this was just a tale from the mouth of a drunkard or drugged-up kid, I’d laugh it off as fantasy. I’ve had a lifetime among crooks and liars, where even the guilty, stunned by the creativity of their own lie, believe themselves innocent. But Monique was adamant. She believed what Cal had told her in his final letter. I believed her. When she went to get the letter, it was gone. The only other person who’d seen it was a man named Philip Bell, introducing himself as a long lost friend of Cal.

  As we both know, in this line of business, coincidence is rarely innocence. When I got to the convict archives in Canberra, he’d already beaten me to the McCreedy file. Now, and you’ll probably think I’m losing it when I tell you this, but he matched the physical outline of Billy K. Could he be making a pilgrimage to the site of the book that fledged his wings?

  Worth a thought?

  From: anna_m@hotmail.com

  To: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  Date: Thu 19 Jan 2005 10:49 + 1300

  Yes, it is worth a thought, definitely. But look, Jim. I’ll help you with whatever you need, but I also need some love from you, a little something to show that Billy K isn’t the only person you’re thinking of!!! I’m more than just another officer!

  Anyway, the LMS archive has nothing on McCreedy and Rev. Thomas associating, but Thomas’s final correspondence, dated 4 August 1839, certainly demonstrates how keen he was to leave Australia: ‘Please note, that although I have been forced to humble myself for the passage to England, seeking both fare and leave of my duties sooner than the agreed tenure of my Sydney parish, it is merely an admission of my failing health, not a dereliction of duty.’ The letter is brief, and apart from wishing the LMS to arrange his travel arrangements with some haste, he notably warns of, ‘nefarious forces in the South Pacific, who, by hook or crook, would wish that the Lord Jesus remain a stranger on those heathen shores.’

  But this archive has been outshone by Google. Yes, pixels beat paper on this one. I spent a while on the web searching for McCreedy. Well, maybe no more than name sharing chance, but in 1841 the Reverend Patrick McCreedy Orphanage was founded in Mombassa. It’s still there today. Does this help with anything?

  Here in my darkened flat, drizzling outside, the only light the glow of the screen.

  Thinking of you,

  A x

  From: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  To: anna_m@hotmail.com

  Date: Thu 19 Jan 2005 12:17 + 1300

  Thank you, Anna. For everything. Sitting in a Canberra hotel room waiting for inspiration is easier knowing I have you. And believe me, I’m not forgetting you, despite thinking of Billy K all hours of the day. Though I’ll be honest and admit there is another young lady that I painfully miss too. I took a walk around the lake earlier, then had lunch at a café and tossed the last of my sandwich to the ducks. And God, how I missed my Gemma. I could see her clear as day, right there on the steps, throwing handfuls of bread. I actually forgot myself, what I was doing on the other side of the world. Why I was alone.

  But then back at the hotel I was reminded. Flicking through the channels I flashed past a John Wayne Western, quiz shows, an Aussie Rules game and FOX news. Then finally the man himself. The video playing was ‘The Philistine Burns with Eyes Closed.’ Billy K struts around a prison wing in flames, walking the landing with his guitar as burning paper falls from the cells above. The prisoners dance as they riot, and Billy K opens up cell doors as he walks.

  ‘I’m going to find you,’ I said aloud. ‘Even if it kills me.’

  I’ve convinced myself that if I get him, I get my life back.

  And sitting there by myself, no number to call, no one to talk to without deception, I wondered if Billy K is made to run for ever.

  But then who is?

  Too much time to think. If I don’t have a line of enquiry by tomorrow, I could be flying home. At least I’d get to hold my gorgeous Gemma. And you.

  x x

  From: anna_m@hotmail.com

  To: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com

  Date: Thu 19 Jan 2005 13:55 + 1300

  You know I’ll be waiting if you do. But also know I’ll be ready to assist if you do play rogue detective a little longer … Now, believe it or not, I’ve just been over to your house and turned it upside down. Roberts, in his cunning, decided it was time to check for clues of your whereabouts. He also decided that a criminologist accompany the search team, and that the criminologist should be yours truly.

  Does he really know the two of us are that involved? If so, it was a cruel thing for him to do. Thank God I’m not the love letter type! As PCs Laurel and Hardy lifted up seat covers and opened cupboard doors, Roberts walked me through the house, asking for a ‘professional and personal’ hypothesis on where you might run, who would you contact to help … But apart from your t
aste in underwear and how much you love your daughter – Does your ex know how many pictures you have of Gemma? – Roberts learned nothing new. Was he hoping to find something that would incriminate us both? That I’d suddenly crumble and tell all on the sight of my own bra?

  Within an hour of being back at the station Roberts informed the team that your details, including photo, had been passed on to the Australian police and customs. He already knew about your $10,000 withdrawal at the bank in Sydney – smart move making one debit then using cash. Tension on his face tells me this is all he has. But be careful now.

  Anyway, I am with you whatever.

  A x

  So, I’m officially a wanted man. And not for the first time, though I suppose I was a wanted boy as a teenage runaway, a bloodied knife folded in my pocket.

  That day by the motorway, I had no idea where I was going, only that London glittered like some spinning carousel, a fairground ride I could hop on-board and forget who I was. And what I’d done. I’d stood on the edge of a motorway and waited for a magic carpet to whisk me all the way there. As if it was London I was heading for, and not just a clear blue sky.

  This time I fly by plane, to Alice Springs, the red heart of Australia. From this height the land looks uninhabited, pockmarked and scorched. I watch our winged shadow race across the desert floor.

  What beautiful country to drive I dodge kangaroos and skittering iguanas, the bickering vultures on the edge of the road fighting for the carcasses of run-over cattle. No people, just the odd tree, defining the curve of the earth, growing from the horizon on nearing.

  Thinking again about Cal stranded in the desert, I hired the best kitted-out Toyota 4WD in Alice Springs – GPS, two-wave radio, maps, First Aid box, enough tools to strip the engine and put it back together, and a spare 10-litre jerry can brimming with water.

  After the flat monotony of Route 1, the Sandover Highway is a roller coaster. I’m glad to get off the asphalt and feel something more than the occasional roadkill flexing the suspension. The track is rutted but not too rough, occasionally juddering my hands from the steering wheel.

  I drive for hours, no thought in my head but the holes in the road. I’m happily numbed by the focus, only pulling over when the sun touches the horizon. I pitch the rented tent, cook a tin of beans on the gas stove and light a fire. The one dead tree I find and break for kindling stands at the edge of light, and the knots and bark shadow like the furrowed brow of an old man come to warm himself before the coals.

  I sleep, then wake up cold, the roll mat too thin for the desert night. Stepping outside, I’m stunned by the light of the universe, the stillness of it all. How a galaxy in mid-explosion can seem so calm. Now the dead tree glows with a crown of stars, the furrowed brow smoothed. I stand and take a piss, crouch to the embers of the fire and rub my hands.

  And then, as sudden as a switch is flicked, a lone gust of wind. The coals flare, ash races on a gale, the tent swells like a billowed sail.

  And then nothing. The wind gone, blown.

  I set again off just before dawn, making the creek around midday. I had imagined navigating dunes of drifted sand, but a rough track, no doubt carved by others seeking out the ruin, leads me all the way.

  And what should have been a drive focused on direction, oil checks and overheating, was a study of the dream I had last night.

  It was a replay of the first time Anna and I went out together, when she picked me up two streets from the station, without asking, because she knew that I wanted her, to be driven out to the coast and forget who I was, who I was chasing. She’d pulled over, leaned across the passenger seat and flicked open the door. I noticed her painted toenails, that she drove barefoot. I asked her if the car was stolen and she laughed. She asked if I had enough money for a stick of rock.

  On waking this morning, I’d thought the dream reality and the desert the dream. Driving now, it plays vividly on, as bright as the Australian sun.

  We were heading towards the coast, along an empty dual carriageway.

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘A kestrel.’

  Anna followed my finger to the hovering bird. It dropped like a stone to the verge. I gently gripped the inside of her forearm, felt the heat of her soft skin, a pulse. The car veered across both lanes before she regained control. She wound down the window.

  Even in my sleep, cold on the desert floor in central Australia, I’d tasted sea air, perfume.

  ‘Are we running away?’ she asked.

  ‘Just like a singer.’

  She looked across, knowing. ‘Or a fourteen-year-old in a stolen car.’

  I laughed. ‘But with a romantic ending.’ I added. ‘The two of us, sailing on the sun.’

  ‘Into the sunset,’ she corrected. ‘Not on the sun.’ She laughed. ‘We’d burst into flames.’

  A seaside town flickered past like a reel of film. I saw the reflection of the car in a shop window, Anna the driver and I the passenger, the pair of us incognito.

  She pulled up in a car park where shifting sand had blown into the corners, halfway up fence posts and signs, dissolving kerbs and footpaths. We felt the fresh wind. Anna locked the doors and we walked across the road on to the beach. She tried to trip me and we wrestled and laughed. The sea boomed against the shore. A rabble of gulls squawked above. I walked with my arm over her shoulder and pulled her close to feel her hair dance about my face. We stood and kissed for a long time. I kissed her neck and hair and cheeks and nose, pressing against her pelvis.

  And when we stopped and stared, I could see myself in her eye, as though I occupied her pupil. She turned and pulled me towards the dunes. She walked backwards and tugged me along. And when I ran ahead, Anna chased. Up and down the dunes, like children, weightless on the crests and blown with the wind, one step from flight.

  We fell laughing into a dip and rolled upright with sand pouring from our hair. We turned over and over again until she lay on top. She lifted her head and listened. ‘No wind here,’ she said. ‘Nothing at all.’

  And she bent to me like a woman from the sky. She bit my lip and gripped the hair at the back of my head. She sat upright and reached around and into my trousers.

  ‘Here,’ she said. She worked her hand up and down. She told me to lift up her skirt, and I did.

  She lay with her mouth wet upon my neck. I looked to the fluffs of cloud that raced on the wind. I thought of sails blown free from wooden ships. And I thought of him, Billy K, adrift on the breeze.

  It was cold when the sun dipped below the rim of the dune. Anna had fallen asleep. When she finally opened her eyes and saw that the day was fading she said, ‘We should go.’

  But this wasn’t how it had happened last night. If the dream had been faithful to memory, we’d have opened a bottle of wine and eaten cheese and bread, watched children fly kites above the surf. But this dream was the cut of a cruel director.

  Instead we stood and climbed, into the brunt of the wind. Sand whipped up and stung our eyes. Our shadows walked ahead, elongated on the beach. We saw a white yacht on the horizon.

  ‘See,’ said Anna. ‘Sailing into the sunset, not on the sun.’ And suddenly she was crying, pointing. ‘Look.’

  The sail was torn from the mast, snatched into the sky. I turned to comfort her, but she was gone. And so was my shadow, striding over the dunes. I was utterly alone.

  Then I saw her. A woman, facing out to sea. Standing in the surf. Her favourite dress fluttering in the wind. My mother. I called out but she didn’t hear. I shouted, screamed. She didn’t hear because she was speaking to the little girl at her side, the granddaughter she never met. Gemma.

  I tried to run, but the hard sand softened, clogged my steps. I tripped and fell. I could only watch as my mother lifted Gemma into her arms and waded into the sea, engulfed by the foaming surf.

  I’d woken lying halfway out of the tent door, clutching fists of red sand.

  Only when I pick up the fresh ruts of another 4WD does the dream end. To think of something
else, to think of something different from loss, I imagine finding Billy K sitting on a rock and strumming his guitar. In an act of benevolence I’d allow him to finish the song before snapping on the cuffs. Even though I have no cuffs, or the authority to put them on him.

  After this little fantasy, when I get to the ruin at dusk and there’s another jeep already pulled over, my heart races.

  But no Billy K. Yet. Just Albert and Edith from Melbourne, a retired couple touring out their twilight years. I introduce myself as Dr Adams, and apart from dodging a few awkward questions on South Pacific history, it’s good to sit and feel normal.

  Too dark to see the tumbledown building properly, I happily accept the offer of a couple – and only a couple – of Albert’s beers. We sit and talk, watching the moonrise and Edith grill chicken. Beyond the chatter of complimenting the chef, the subject turns to family. They have grandchildren, happy families with houses and pools. Then I’m asked if I’m married, whether I have kids. And though I dread the question, I find myself opening up about the divorce, Anna and Gemma. Edith offers comfort, that a loving father is a loving father, separated or not. Then Albert ventures I’ll be home soon enough, that before I know it I’ll be back in London, girlfriend and daughter waiting.

  Alone in my tent, no return flight booked, I wonder when that day might be.

  I bid them farewell in the morning, with an excuse about checking oil and tyre pressure delaying our travelling together. Once the dust cloud of their SUV settles, I investigate the ruin, crude and broken bricks, splinters of beams. Historians say there’s no evidence of a church, only that it was a store for stockmen driving cattle, with lead shot ammunition and a candlestick also recovered from the debris. With no expertise on matters of archaeology, I can’t disagree.

  But what does count is the touch and feel of reality at the end of my fingertips, a poem I can trace like Braille, scratched into one of the sandstone bricks: