Winter Traffic

by Stephen Greenall

  ‘They did a story about it. Four Corners.’

  ‘I jackarooed when I was roughly that age but the show made it real, the families having to live with it. Simon and James.’

  ‘It affected you.’

  Simon and James. Heather walked in and you were weeping, close to keening. She’d never seen you do that. I’m at piece, said the car. It broke you down / the boy at piece.

  Rawson sets his glass and finishes his tea. Strange how an unfinished drink will weigh on the mind, nag the drinker who has left just a sip. ‘It’s time I hit the frog. Will you walk me out?’

  —

  Beneath the trees they are invulnerable to cold insipid rain. The wind plays hell with Rawson’s hair. ‘You’re a good person.’

  Her smile is a smile of apology. ‘There are plenty of days when I’m not.’

  ‘No, you’re special. Still here.’

  ‘I wish I wasn’t. I wonder at my purpose.’

  The Beowulf brings out the envelope. ‘I had a long time to write this. If I could have written it sooner, I would have. But I couldn’t, Gwen. It’s like the fact of the thing is its own defence.’

  Her arms fold tight against her body, the body wary, not keen. ‘What is it,’ she wonders of the thing in her hands, squirming to undo her unthinking receipt.

  ‘Nature decides.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The names, Gwen—the faces. You’ll read it when you read it. Or you won’t.’ Rawson steps forward and takes her tiny hands in his; the letter protrudes. ‘It’ll help, I promise. I convinced myself it was kindness to let a sleeping dog lie, but that was only me being weak. The mother of Sophie Dance isn’t like that, Gwendolin. The mother of Sophie Dance is iron / she will hack it.’

  The Big Ship rounds into the night and she speaks to his wake, a sentence abducted by wind. His detective mind works to piece it from the fragments and many crook things have you done but that letter is not one nor the action implied. When you think of her Sophie you lament that your girls’ first memories are of an angry man, just some large and furious personage to be avoided because yelling and unhappy. And so they did not understand what they were to you, and for that you cannot forgive the bottle or yourself that chose to drink it.

  ‘God bless you, Michael.’

  These are the shards he jigsaws and they score his soul like quicklime, an ignition that refuses his offer of key / he gouges for what feels like forever.

  22

  Millar loves airports for not being hospitals. Food’s the same—shit—but the journeys less confronting. And shareable: Karen walks the concourse and thinks about the terminal, the fluorescent lights that hurt her eyes and trigger flashback. There’s a disinfectant they use and she wishes they didn’t.

  Lenny waits in the waiting room. Visiting hours have lapsed, do not revive till morning, an event distant and theoretical. Night shift at Sydney Adventist, a working model of quietly felt eternity.

  Karen has a quietly spoken word with the nurse on desk, the nurse who nods and picks up a phone. Paging Doctor Someone. Lenny drinks tea made with tender care by a vending machine. When Karen goes across it eats her coinage.

  ‘Howdy, cobber. You look like you could do with a stay.’

  Karen’s grimace is not for show. ‘Thanks, but I’ve had one. It wasn’t very restful.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Years back. But the San liveth forever.’

  Lenny looks around, at a built environment built first for sanity-challenged Edwardians. Her first time here, but God knows they’re all the same.

  ‘I fucking hated it,’ says Karen with abrupt intensity. It startles them both, a strike out of nowhere, out of somewhere basic. ‘I guess that’s my way of saying I’m glad you could make it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t miss it.’ Hooded eyes; Lenny is tired too. Everybody’s tired too. ‘Interviewing a patient?’

  ‘It’s not an interview. From what I hear, it’ll be one-way traffic.’

  Dr Sum Wan looks like she should still be prefecting up the road at Pymble Ladies. She responds to Karen’s introduction with a series of rapid nods, Busan eyes made bright by an all-absorbent intellect. ‘At this stage the focus is making her comfortable,’ the doc says in perfect Wahroonga. ‘Is it likely to be upsetting?’

  ‘There’s a gravity about it,’ says Karen. ‘But I’m hoping it’ll give her some peace.’

  ‘Five minutes, be gentle as you can.’

  ‘Copy that.’

  ‘Probably plays Chopin in her spare time,’ Lenny says to the girl’s diminishing back. ‘Runs clinics in the Congo.’

  ‘What happens next is unofficial,’ says Karen. ‘So far off the record it isn’t funny.’

  The vanilla book appears in Karen’s hand like a magician’s deck. Lenny looks at it with frank hunger. ‘That’s alright, I’m not here for laughs.’

  —

  The half-light in the room is horrible. For a moment they think they have been ushered into the wrong chamber, a dead bower put aside for the viewing of corpses: the only movement is a corner-dwelling machine. It looks primitive, a comically cheap prop from a silent-era movie. A glove in black rubber engorges and declines, aspirating hoarsely, doing all the breathing.

  A nurse shadows them in and hits a night light. The ghastly face of one who has been here too long, suspended, yearning for the push that no one will give. The air is thin like her eyes.

  ‘Mrs Meath? My name is Karen. I’m police. This is a colleague of mine, Leonara. I’ve come to talk about your son.’

  The eyeballs make a slow roll and Lenny looks into the corner of the room. Nothing there. Sometimes nothing is beautiful.

  A chair by the bed and Karen takes it, speaking words that are fluent but considered. Lenny wonders if they have been dwelt on over time, or if Karen’s mind is simply the cogent and formulaic kind. ‘After your son’s trial, a retired judge took a closer look at the conviction. His name was Angelus Koestler. He’s dead now, but I have his findings. I wanted you to know what he turned up.

  ‘Mary, the detectives who ran the investigation concealed vital evidence from the Crown. From the defence. Justice Koestler regarded what they suppressed as exculpatory—as being sufficient to rule out William as a suspect in the murder of Sophie Dance. In Koestler’s legal opinion, your son’s conviction was manifestly unsafe.’

  The machine soldiers on, ruminating over the deep tidings. Against expectation the mother’s hand makes a slow revolve, fingers forming a point that orients to sky. Karen doesn’t shirk it, leans in close to grasp the flesh and catch the whisper, an old woman’s message from the near other side.

  ‘Intense,’ says Lenny to the hall. Karen, on her heels, breathes almost as deep, adjusting her skirt, pulling her jacket straight and down. The gesture belongs to a marshal walking out of a troubled saloon, swift retribution bloodily imposed. But there’s no sense of justice in her face, no sheriffy satisfaction. Lenny thinks about her own will and testament, her own last wishes. God spare her from days such as that, nights such as this.

  Shotgun, thanks. Who’d step up? She can’t expect the cats to do it. The downward conversation is three lines, eight seconds.

  ‘You didn’t have to do that.’

  ‘Yeah. I did.’

  ‘Well. She looked better for having heard it.’

  —

  In the night they hear sirens. Coming here? They get louder then softer as the women move beneath covered walkways, spared the soft rain but not the hard wind during long descent to carpark. A man in uniform awaits, a rent-a-guard standing in the streetlight nimbus. Philosophical, hands on hips, shards on the ground like a cybernetic frost.

  ‘Son of a bitch,’ says Karen beneath her breath. At the sight of her badge the security guy widens his eyes and whistles with respect. ‘Shit, that was quick.’

  ‘I’m the victim, not the cavalry. What have you got?’

  His shrug is persuasive. ‘No witnesses. I saw the damage and called it i
n. Bam.’

  Karen doesn’t look at him; she’s too busy looking at everything else. Rear passenger side, the window smashed. In the obverse mind where prophecy lives, hard fact in four dimensions, she sees the man in balaclava who wields an expert tyre iron and rifles through her papers. If the universe is made of dark matter, then so is every human mind.

  ‘Unlucky,’ says Lenny Clarke.

  ‘I’ll take it from here,’ says Karen Millar.

  21

  Sutton meets Rawson at the breakfast place to speak of sport and weather. They nab a spot on the footpath and watch the little town come to life / what passes for life. It is ritual for Bonecrusher to eat them out of bacon, to drink a litre of coffee and chase with juice. When sausages arrive they are spitting from the pan and someone breathes suggestively on his ankle.

  ‘I wanna drive the hinterland,’ he says in pain, a morsel of white-hot meat bobbing right-left in his mouth. ‘Ow.’

  ‘When will you learn,’ says Sutton to his eggs.

  ‘I only do it because he starts yippin me.’

  Rawson thinks the issue is his series of strategic fumbles, the cruel-but-charitable offcuts he airdrops onto ground. He dunks them in water beforehand but the tongue of a dog is the most sensitive licking-stick in the cosmic chain of bein—

  ‘Not the dog,’ says Sutton. ‘Your indigestion.’ They hear a short high bark of exasperation, Bloke vexed by a treat that will scorch him if he goes it. Rawson looks at the main supply and makes a whimper much the same.

  ‘Can I take the bugger with?’

  Sutton nods / they deserve each other. He waves them away, wanders back to his motel.

  —

  He unlocks the door and stands in the frame. Housekeeping has been. Sutton always makes his bed before leaving and the maid always makes it again, brand new sheets imposed with pointed rectitude, military strict. The guest knows it has become a contest.

  He takes two steps into the room and removes his wraparounds, underarms them gently onto bed. He does the same with wallet, with watch. Sutton takes a third/fourth step and grips the metal in his hand, bunches a fist until the key projects as weapon.

  ‘Come out.’

  A man emerges from the second bedroom, his hands raised high. A head taller than Sutton, broader across the chest, tanned and very handsome. His expression is mild / it borders on amused. His suit is very beautiful.

  ‘Hello, Jamie.’

  Sutton frowns. He takes the key, puts it back into his pocket.

  —

  ‘It was Rawson. He called his daughters.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I told them a week, but it took me longer.’

  ‘We should have moved by now.’

  ‘True. But there’s nowhere they won’t find you.’

  ‘You mean we.’

  Simon smiles. ‘I am just the person they send. I can be erased, Jamie. You could erase me right now. But they are fixed.’

  ‘You used to be more arrogant.’

  ‘I have changed. When you fight next to someone, you learn them. When you kill, there is a bond. And yet we didn’t know you.’

  ‘You knew I was reliable. What else is there.’

  ‘A rhetorical question from Sutton. Amazing…It’s true you were reliable. A quiet person, gifted, but even your name was a lie.’

  ‘My name is Sutton.’

  ‘A person can get new names, yes. But he cannot give up old ones. Your sister died when you were six; your mother when you were ten. Your father hit you, put you in hospital, petitioned the court to get you back. Do you know what he said to the magistrate? I have it written down. You took the name of your uncle, a man related only by marriage.’

  ‘Why are you here.’

  ‘To warn you. Giving orders to the others came easily, but not to you. You were further along the road, the one I wanted to take. Now you are further behind.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Tu te souviens de Djibouti?’

  ‘Non.’

  ‘La dernière soirée—L’embuscade près de l’hôpital. Les Ghanéens n’étaient pas Ghanéens…J’étais en admiration devant toi, Jamie. Comme les autres. Tu m’as rendu ça difficile. Je veux dire.’

  ‘Ça n’existe pas.’

  ‘Djibouti?’

  ‘Le passé. Il n’y a pas de Djibouti. Pas d’embuscade / pas de Ghanéens / pas d’hôpital / pas de véhicule blinde. Il y a seulement maintenant, il y a seulement cela.’

  ‘Le français fait de toi un philosophe.’

  ‘Une chose n’existe pas en dehors du moment où elle…’

  ‘Existe?’

  ‘Tu penses que c’est une blague, cette querelle entre deux hommes.’

  ‘Je ne me moque pas de toi. Juste ton accent.’

  ‘Arnaud.’

  ‘Ta voix—elle est pleine de poissons…The woman you have lived with adores this language, Jamie. And has no idea you speak it.’

  ‘This is why they sent you. Because we knew each other before.’

  ‘The past was never mentioned.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t realise.’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  Sutton’s agitation, slow but growing. He has no tools for the job / there is no worse feeling. ‘What can Rawson give them?’

  ‘Everything. That is what they settle for. And if you try to help him they will put you in the ground.’

  The carpenter puts his face into a single hand as though to rub away headache, memory. ‘It’s just a feud. Just a stupid fucken grudge between strangers.’

  ‘To begin with. But then it goes further. An instrument comes into being.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Anything can be done, Jamie. This shouldn’t be news to a boy who lost his sister before he knew her. Whose mother could not protect him. Whose father didn’t like him. You lost your uncle to illness and your aunt to drink driving. At twenty you joined an army and travelled to foreign countries, fought secret wars, committed terrorist acts.’

  ‘You showed me how.’

  ‘Yes—and I learnt the lesson just as you did not.’ Simon produces a piece of paper, hands it across. ‘Balance sheet,’ says the beautiful suit. ‘Rawson’s fund for his daughters.’ A click of fingers: ‘Gone, empty. The instrument can do that.’

  ‘It can thieve.’

  ‘That is what the world is—a process of ongoing theft. Rawson will be sacked, stripped of commendations. The new commission will make an example, call witnesses to name him as a patron of brothels, a veteran of hard drugs. Perverting justice, suborning perjury, consorting with criminal elements…if he fights, calls in every favour, he might be allowed to visit his daughters in the presence of court-appointed people.’

  ‘His girls won’t care he’s out of a job.’

  ‘Rawson will—it’s his self-opinion that matters. He will still have Uncle Jem on his side, but Jem will have his own shit to deal with. I have a feeling you’ll be interviewed about Koestler again…For the record, the instrument doesn’t understand you. Slane is not your friend, but you protected him—even at cost to yourself. I tried to explain.’

  ‘That case is bullshit.’

  ‘The police can’t charge you, no. But the Crown can think up an alternative prosecution. It will be made to. And this time, no appeal.’

  ‘Bring it on.’

  ‘It’s hard to train for prison, Jem—but I was surprised when they told me you didn’t cope.’

  Sutton gets out of the truck and walks towards the surf, timeless front in a constant war. He wears jeans, nothing else, no shoes / no shirt. The world at noon is quiet with zero birds and primordial sea, water that has heard and witnessed every conceivable thing. But perhaps it has no power of recall, no cells to jail the data it collects. That would be terrible, he thinks, if the sea were a goldfish—if every atrocity the first.

  The charge is true. He did not cope.

  Sutton comes to the place where new names are gifted. Feet douse in the tide to feel it
s heartbeat but the pulse is a vinegar, repelling him fast. When he turns to face the interior he sees that the truck is empty / that the man called Simon is gone.

  20

  There is nothing so articulate as silence. You can orient your compass by it, set your watch, marvel at its gift for expressing the essence of the thing. The girl who doesn’t answer your letters / the boy who doesn’t call you back.

  —

  Karen’s car is a cold environment. Blame the shattered window. A frigid enlivening wind can be heard behind them, rifling the molested papers. The breeze is the ghost of the vandal, a faceless man with tyre iron. Nothing was taken.

  Leonara says, ‘Just drop me at a station that’s easy.’

  The driver nods and plants it like Stirling Moss, smashing Pacific Highway while its milestone names loom and fall. Gordon, Killara, Lindfield, Roseville. The road feeds like a ribbon and the down-south metropolis draws them closer via moon-bound tide. They are skirting Chatswood when Lenny again makes her polite suggestion.

  Karen answering with words this time, ‘Thought we might go to a controlled location, let you read Koestler’s book.’

  The journalist says nothing, afraid that speech might bust the moment / somehow void the offer.

  —

  —Never been a driver?

  —I like the train. Listen to music, do some work.

  —I guess jumping on at Faulconbridge means you always get a seat.

  —Pretty much. I never got used to driving, so I never missed it.

  —Be a rude shock to me. Mind you, the way traffic’s getting in this town.

  —The new editor reckons it’s worse than Manhattan. But hey, the tunnel will fix it.

  —How can a city be so rich, and so new, and so fucking retarded for driving?

  —Kevin used to ask the same thing…Fiancé.

  —Didn’t go through with it?

  —He died.

  —Oh. Sorry.

  —My own bloody fault. War photographer. I never did value common sense in a man.