Dreamland

by Gilling, Tom

  Two bikers in black leathers and storm-trooper boots drove their Harley Davidsons into the carpark, took their Nazi helmets off and waddled inside to join the queue. Maybe it had been a coincidence—not every phone user had a listed number. Carmody could have been the name of a visitor, or a tenant. Maybe he was imagining a threat where none existed. Maybe Stackpole was just trying to put the wind up him. Maybe.

  ‘He’s not here,’ a woman’s voice called out from behind the sagging timber fence.

  Nick hadn’t realised he was being watched. He looked around.

  ‘I said he’s not here.’ The speaker paused. ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘Mr Stackpole,’ said Nick, walking towards the gap in the fence through which the woman had been spying on him.

  She was wearing a nylon apron and pink slippers and her grey hair was in a net. ‘You won’t find him,’ she said. ‘Are you the police?’

  ‘No. I’m a friend.’

  ‘The police were here the other day. I seen them come. He wasn’t in then either.’

  ‘Can you tell me where he is?’

  ‘They took him away. Last night.’

  ‘Took him away—who did?’

  ‘The ambos. Took him away on a stretcher.’ She pointed to an upstairs window. ‘I saw it out of that window there. Plastic mask and everything. I thought he must be dead.’ She hesitated. ‘You should see the bottles he puts out every week.’

  ‘Do you know where they took him?’

  ‘Hospital. I don’t know which one. You’d have to ask. What are you—a friend of his?’

  ‘Old friend,’ said Nick.

  ‘He’s got a wife, you know. And kids. Never sees ’em, but.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘They live up there.’ She waved a thumb absentmindedly over her left shoulder. ‘Sydney.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You know Sydney?’

  ‘I know his wife and children live in Sydney.’

  ‘Never been there,’ the woman said. ‘Never wanted to either. Here’s good enough for me. Too old to start again.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ said Nick.

  ‘I told him he was ill. “See a doctor,” I said, but he never would. Mine was the same. Cancer. They didn’t even open him up. Too far gone, they said. Wasn’t worth the trouble. I said to your friend, let them have a look. Get the doctors to take some x-rays. You never know what’s growing inside you. But I don’t think he wanted to know.’ She tucked a stray wisp of grey hair back under the net. ‘Tell him I’ll bring in the mail. And tell him not to worry about the garden.’

  Looking around him as he walked back to the gate, Nick doubted that Stackpole had ever worried about the garden.

  Pretending to be a family friend, Nick rang around the city’s hospitals until he found that a man named Ian Stackpole had been admitted late the previous night to the emergency ward at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He thought about the time. It must have been just after Stackpole had called the taxi company with a hoax booking for Nick Carmody.

  The nurse he spoke to wouldn’t comment on his condition. Nick wondered whether he’d had a stroke. An overweight middle-aged male smoker who drank too much—Stackpole was the archetypal twenty-first-century stroke victim.

  At the flower shop downstairs he bought a couple of bunches of copper-coloured chrysanthemums. The thought crossed his mind that Stackpole’s ex-wife might be there.

  When the lift doors opened Nick’s eye was drawn, as always, to the sight of his own shaven head. Even now, it could still take him by surprise. At a conscious level he identified fully with the image he saw in the mirror. But subconsciously he still half-expected to wake up and find his hair had grown back in the night.

  He found the ward and walked around it, looking at the names on the doors. Eventually he spotted the name ‘Stackpool’ on a blue door at the far end of a corridor. He wasn’t a grammatical pedant but the misspelt name offended him. He went back to the nurses’ station and borrowed a pen and corrected the ‘pool’ to ‘pole’. It wasn’t strictly visiting time but no one seemed to be patrolling.

  He stood outside for a few moments, watching Stackpole through the small square of wire-reinforced glass. There was no sign of his ex-wife or their children. A tray of food lay untouched on the table beside him. Stackpole was lying in bed staring out of the window.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Stackpole. ‘Look what the cat dragged in.’

  Nick looked around for a vase. Not finding one, he put the flowers in the sink.

  It was a double room overlooking a small patch of lawn where two nurses sat on a bench, smoking. The other bed was empty.

  ‘How did you know I was here?’ Stackpole asked without looking around.

  ‘Your neighbour saw the ambulance come.’

  ‘I bet she did.’

  ‘She asked me to tell you she’d bring in the mail.’

  Stackpole nodded. ‘She’ll enjoy reading that.’

  A silence followed. Then Nick asked, ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like shit. If you’re interested.’

  Nick saw his face contort with pain. He was hooked up to various monitors. A thin plastic catheter disappeared under the bedclothes.

  ‘Do they know what it is?’

  ‘They reckon it’s kidney stones.’

  Nick had known people with kidney stones. They didn’t look like this. He glanced down at the uneaten meal. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘Apart from a new pair of kidneys, you mean?’

  ‘If the food’s no good I can buy you something from the canteen.’

  ‘Thanks. But no thanks. If I need anything I’ll get it myself.’

  ‘What about your wife and the kids?’

  ‘Ex-wife, ex-kids,’ said Stackpole. ‘Why are you here, Carmody? Don’t tell me you’re one of those hospital weirdos. The sort that likes visiting strangers and showing them the way to Jesus. Have you come to show me the way, Carmody, is that it?’

  ‘I haven’t come to show you the way to Jesus, Ian.’

  ‘Then why have you come?’

  ‘Somebody made a booking for a taxi last night. They asked for me personally. The passenger’s name was Nick Carmody.’

  ‘Very interesting. But what’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘Come on, Ian. I know it was you. It had to be. You decided it was payback time.’

  ‘Payback? That’s more your style, isn’t it? The Star always enjoyed a bit of payback, didn’t it.’

  ‘This is not a joke.’

  ‘It wasn’t me, Carmody. I was at home. Writhing in agony. It might hurt you to hear this but last night you weren’t uppermost in my thoughts. If you think someone’s jerking you around you’ll have to find another culprit.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Am I sure of what—that I didn’t book a taxi in your name? Yes, I think I’d remember that. Of course I haven’t got an alibi, Carmody. You’ll just have to take my word for it.’

  Nick walked to the window. If Stackpole hadn’t made the call, who had? He still didn’t believe Flynn was capable of finding him. The police? There had been nothing in the Sydney papers about Nick Carmody being charged over the hit-and-run. Maybe the girl had confessed. If there was a warrant out for his arrest, he would have read about it. As far as the police were concerned, Carmody was just another name in a missing persons file—and as long as he didn’t attempt to cash any of Harry Grogan’s cheques, he’d stay that way.

  Another possibility struck him: Kevin Chambers. What if Chambers was the one jerking him around? He’d become so comfortable with the thought of being Kevin Chambers that he’d almost forgotten Kevin Chambers already existed. Maybe Chambers had made the call.

  Nick had the sense of being involved in a game in which the rules had abruptly changed. In some mysterious way their positions had been reversed and Chambers was pretending to be him.

  There were dozens of ways Chambers could have tracked him to Melbourne. Nick knew t
hat most fugitives gave themselves away the moment they needed money. Their first visit to an automatic teller machine was usually their last. But it wasn’t only money that left a trail. Nick wished he’d destroyed Chambers’ panel van but it was too late to worry about that now. If he was lucky it would have been reduced to a rack of spare parts, but luck wasn’t something Nick felt he could count on. If it was Chambers who’d made the hoax call then Nick needed to know why, and what he might do next, and in order to answer that, he needed to know what kind of man Chambers was, what sort of life he lived, whether he’d ever been in trouble with the police. If Chambers did come looking for him he would start with the panel van, and the panel van would lead him to Melbourne.

  He turned to look at Stackpole. ‘I need some information.’

  ‘Why would I want to help you, Carmody?’

  ‘Because you know how to get it, and because I’m asking.’

  Stackpole reached for a glass of water.

  ‘That probably sounded more touching to you than it does to me. You come here accusing me of things and now you’re begging me for help. Pardon me if I can’t see what’s in this for me.’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Nick, ‘if I could ask anyone else, I would.’

  Stackpole stared at him. For a moment Nick thought he was going to tell him to get out. He couldn’t have blamed him; Nick’s behaviour so far hadn’t exactly been honourable. Stackpole scrunched up his face, as though enduring another spasm of pain. Then he asked, ‘What sort of information?’

  The trouble with working a double shift was that you were often too tired to drive the next day. If you were too tired you missed the good jobs that came in on the radio. You drove like a zombie. You misheard instructions and, out of sheer fatigue, you gave up searching for jobs on the street and took refuge on taxi ranks. In the end you took home forty dollars and might as well have spent the whole time in bed.

  Nick got in at 3 a.m. and took the telephone off the hook. Alison was somewhere between Melbourne and Tokyo. He found her destination hard to remember. It was nearly one in the afternoon when he woke. He put the phone back on its cradle, and heard it ring straight away. He picked up the receiver.

  ‘Carmody?’

  He recognised Stackpole’s voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Asleep.’

  ‘I’ve been ringing you all morning.’

  ‘I left the phone off the hook.’

  ‘Do you want that information or not?’

  ‘Yes. Of course—’

  ‘You’ll have to come and get it. I’m not giving it to you over the phone.’

  For the first time in months, it was pouring with rain. The temperature had dropped about ten degrees. The drought seemed to have broken while Nick was asleep.

  He found Stackpole sitting up in bed. A tray of uneaten food was lying on the bedside table. The various tubes he’d been hooked up to last time appeared to have been removed. Nick shook his jacket in the sink and sat down.

  ‘Feeling any better?’ he asked.

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘When will they let you go home?’

  ‘They won’t. They’re keeping me under observation.’

  ‘So how long—’

  Stackpole cut him off. ‘Do you want to hear this or not?’

  He opened the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out the scrap of paper on which Nick had written the registration number of Chambers’ panel van. Nick waited for him to speak. He didn’t want to know about the vehicle, of course. He wanted to know what the vehicle revealed about its owner.

  ‘The registered owner of that vehicle is a woman,’ said Stackpole. ‘Alison Mary Lake. Previously Alison Mary Chambers. 16 Beach Street, Curl Curl.’ He looked up. ‘That’s a Sydney address, in case you’ve forgotten.’ He handed Nick the scrap of paper. ‘No criminal record.’

  Nick stared in disbelief at the name. Alison Mary Chambers. The name matched the initials on the ingot around her neck— the ingot she claimed to have been given by her mother. But they were her initials, or at least they had been until she changed her name. Alison had married a man called Lake and taken his name. But her maiden name was Chambers. She had to be Kevin Chambers’ sister. Nick remembered the accident in Box Hill. The bus driver must have taken down his number. Someone had identified the owner and made a claim on the insurance company—and the letter had gone to Alison. For some reason she had come searching for him. But why?

  The chain of connections started clanking through Nick’s head. He and Alison hadn’t met by chance at all. Chance had nothing to do with it. Somehow it was all down to Alison.

  ‘What about Kevin Chambers?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Does he have a record?’

  ‘Juvenile stuff. Property damage, offensive language in a public place. Nothing since he was sixteen.’ He paused. ‘What were you expecting?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Stackpole was manoeuvring himself out of bed.

  ‘What are you doing,’ Nick asked.

  ‘What does it look like? I’m getting out of bed. I’m going down the corridor to have a piss. And after that I’m going home.’

  ‘So you’ve been discharged?’

  ‘I need a drink. I’m discharging myself.’

  ‘You can’t do that.’

  ‘Watch me.’

  ‘Don’t be crazy, Ian. It’s belting down out there. And you’re wearing pyjamas. Have you got any clothes?’

  ‘You might not believe it, but I wasn’t thinking about what I was wearing when the ambos took me away. I thought I was dying. It didn’t occur to me to pack. I’m lucky they put shoes on me.’

  ‘Jesus, Ian—you can’t walk out in pyjamas.’

  ‘I wasn’t planning to. I’ll borrow some clothes on my way out. There’ll be something lying about.’ He noticed Nick’s green jacket lying in the sink. ‘I’ll take this.’

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Stay here. Give me a head start. If anyone comes in say I’ve gone for a walk around the ward.’

  It seemed like a mad idea to Nick—but the whole world suddenly seemed mad to Nick. The woman whose bed he shared wasn’t the person he’d thought she was five minutes ago.

  He stared out of the window. Rain was falling in sheets that dragged across the face of the building like the slow vanes of a waterwheel.

  Between distant growls of thunder Nick could hear the sound of ambulances arriving and departing from casualty. He watched jagged forks of lightning quiver in the purple sky. He felt dead inside, as if he no longer existed.

  After twenty minutes a nurse came in: a no-nonsense woman from the Pacific islands. She glanced at the empty bed and then at Nick. ‘Where is the patient?’

  Nick began to say what Stackpole had told him to say. Then he stopped. What was the point? Stackpole would be well away by now. In any case the nurse wasn’t listening. She looked at Nick with a kind of weary contempt before walking out.

  The hospital was a maze. Nick made several unsuccessful attempts to reach the main entrance before finding himself next to a door marked ‘Emergency Exit’. There was a small terrace outside. Water cascaded from the awning. Beyond the terrace a covered walkway connected the L-shaped building he’d come from with an older building. Through the rain Nick could just make out a sign that said ‘Way Out’. A broken black umbrella was lying in a metal bin next to the door and Nick took it.

  A small crowd was standing around the ambulance in spite of the rain. Nick wondered what the ambulance was doing in the hospital carpark, rather than in the ambulance bay outside casualty. Its lights were flashing.

  An empty taxi cruised by and he raised an arm but the taxi driver either didn’t see him or had another job to go to. In weather like this there wasn’t much point trying to make a phone booking because the switchboard would be jammed. His best chance was to hail a taxi off the street but almost every taxi he saw was full and
Nick knew he could be standing in the rain for an hour.

  The umbrella kept the rain out of his face but his shoes and socks and trouser legs were already soaked. He hadn’t even thought about where he was going. He wasn’t ready to speak to Alison, not until he’d made up his mind what to say. For some reason he thought of Danny’s father. Harry Grogan had spent a lifetime controlling others: his son, his wife, his shareholders, and a string of neglected mistresses. Grogan had controlled Nick once, buying his obedience for a hundred thousand dollars. What if Grogan was still controlling him?

  A police car arrived and parked behind the ambulance. The police car’s lights were flashing. The rain was coming down harder, bouncing off the tarmac like hail. His umbrella wasn’t going to last long in this. He thought of turning back, of waiting inside the hospital until the storm was over.

  Two of the spectators were holding a kind of tarpaulin sheet over the trolley in a vain effort to keep the patient dry. As the paramedics started wheeling the trolley towards the rear doors of the ambulance, Nick caught a glimpse of a green jacket, and some striped pyjamas.

  The crowd was dispersing. The police, squatting in their fluorescent waterproofs, were examining some marks on the tarmac. Nick approached an off-duty nurse who had been among the crowd of bystanders. She looked shaken.

  Nick couldn’t help himself. ‘Is he dead?’

  The woman seemed as startled as he was by the directness of the question. She took a few moments to answer. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘A car…they said it went straight for him.’

  ‘Who? Who said?’

  The woman shook her head. ‘He was in his pyjamas.’

  During all his years at the Daily Star Nick had never forgotten a story he’d written—especially if it made the front page. Walking away from the hospital carpark, he remembered the story of an Avis car mechanic, George Ruby, who used duplicate car rental agreements left in the glove box of returned vehicles to obtain false driver’s licences. Ruby applied for welfare payments under each name. When he was finally arrested and charged, he had nearly a million dollars stashed in dozens of different bank accounts.