Dreamland

by Gilling, Tom

  Before leaving, Nick did his best to hang the front door back on its hinges—to make it appear, at least from the street, as if nothing was wrong. It wouldn’t be long, he realised, before the dog started to smell and one of the neighbours called the police, but by then he and Alison would be far away.

  Alison came to the door in her pyjamas. Nick didn’t attempt to kiss her and she didn’t offer her face to be kissed. She flattened herself against the wall to allow him to pass. Then she shut the door behind him.

  The light in the hall had blown. Nick walked through the darkness to the kitchen. There was a bitter, metallic taste in his mouth. He needed a shower.

  Alison followed him and stood in the doorway, as if she couldn’t allow herself to come any closer.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’

  ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘You could start by telling me who you are. I mean, who you really are.’

  ‘You know who I am.’

  ‘I know who you’re pretending to be. You’re pretending to be a man called Kevin Michael Chambers.’

  For a long while Nick didn’t say anything. It crossed his mind, at least for a few seconds, to try to bluff it out. But it was too late for that. And Alison deserved more. He could argue that he wasn’t pretending to be anyone, that all he’d wanted from the beginning was to escape from the problems of being Nick Carmody by taking someone else’s name. His intention had never been to impersonate Kevin Chambers, just to duplicate him. But it was all semantics—and Alison probably wouldn’t believe him anyway.

  ‘I needed a name,’ said Nick. ‘I found one in the glove box of a car. I didn’t know anything about the person it belonged to. I didn’t want to know anything. I was afraid of who I was and I thought I’d be safer for a while being someone else.’

  Alison studied him in silence, not just his face but his hands, his arms, as if the truth or falseness of the words he’d just spoken was etched on his skin. ‘Kevin Chambers is my brother,’ she said. ‘But I’m sure you’ve worked that out by now.’

  It felt as though they were staring at each other through miles of space. The kitchen table was like a continent between them. The newspaper was lying there, open at the report of the fire in West Sunshine.

  ‘He sells drugs,’ she said. ‘And he informs on other people who sell drugs. He’s not a good person, my brother.’

  Drug dealer. Police informant. It was clear to Nick why Chambers had enemies, and why those enemies were trying to kill him. ‘How long is it since you’ve seen him?’ he asked.

  ‘Four years,’ said Alison. ‘Maybe five. We’ve never been close. I was only ever a source of money.’

  ‘You bought him a car,’ said Nick.

  ‘Yes, I bought him a car.’ Her voice was full of hurt and disappointment. ‘I paid for it and got it registered. He told me he needed one. He said he was driving to the west. I didn’t ask where. I didn’t want to know. I got a letter from an insurance company saying the car had been involved in an accident in Melbourne. I knew it couldn’t be him. My brother was known in Melbourne. And the people who knew him didn’t like him. I realised a stranger was driving my brother’s car—someone who didn’t know much about him. So I hired someone, a private investigator, to find out who.’

  Nick remembered the dark-haired man in the fawn suit, the one he’d caught sight of from time to time during his first few weeks driving Homolka’s taxi.

  ‘It didn’t take him long to find you. Don’t ask me how. He showed me a photograph. He even caught you on video. And guess what—you hadn’t just taken his car, you’d taken his name as well. The likeness was very convincing. I could see straight away how people were fooled. But I’m his sister. You didn’t walk like Kevin. It was the walk that gave it away. I paid him his money and then I came here myself. I wanted to know what kind of man would want to impersonate my brother.’

  ‘The accident,’ said Nick. ‘You planned it.’

  ‘I’d watched you take that route before. Every Friday in fact. I thought if I waited for you I could make it look like an accident. I made a bit of a mess of it.’

  Nick stood up and walked to the window. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘I wanted to give you the chance to tell me yourself.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Until last night I actually believed you would.’

  She was convincing, and Nick wanted desperately to be convinced: that they had really loved each other, that he hadn’t imagined it all.

  ‘What did Grogan offer you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Harry Grogan. Did he promise not to harm me? Did he say it was for my own safety? He must have told you something. Did Grogan tell you I lied to keep his son out of jail?’

  ‘Jail? What are you talking about? I’ve never met Harry Grogan. What’s he got to do with any of this?’

  ‘I’ve seen your telephone bill. You called Harry Grogan three times.’

  ‘I’m not the only one who lives here.’

  Slowly the truth dawned on him. Danny’s father had tracked him down and now he was having him watched, but it wasn’t Alison doing the watching. It was Corby. Corby the loner, with his odd ways and his nocturnal habits. Corby the opportunist, with his part-time job and his mortgage. It was Corby, he realised, who’d made the hoax taxi booking for Nick Carmody. Corby was Harry Grogan’s spy. And if Corby had been spying on him, he’d been spying on Alison too. But what if Corby was more than that? What if Grogan was behind the killings? Grogan might want Nick out of the way, but not without knowing what had happened to the cheques. It was Corby who’d ransacked the house and found the cheques. Nick suddenly felt hot, as though he was going to faint.

  ‘We have to go,’ he said.

  ‘Not until you tell me everything,’ said Alison. Her fists were clenched. She seemed rooted to the floor, like a statue.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything. Trust me. But not now. There isn’t time.’

  Trust me. How often had he said those words before: to informants, to readers, to ordinary credulous members of the Australian public? Trust me not to reveal who supplied this information. Trust me to get the facts right. Trust me with the precious photograph of your dead son and I’ll make sure you get it back. Trust me. Even to his own ears, the plea felt absurd.

  Alison was shaking her head. She looked scared. ‘Go away where?’

  ‘Anywhere. Without telling Corby. Without telling anyone.’

  For a few moments she didn’t speak. She seemed to be holding her breath, as if by holding it long enough she could enter some new state in which all of this could be forgotten. ‘But what about your dog? You can’t just leave a dog to look after itself.’

  ‘I’ll get someone to feed the dog. We can drive straight to the airport. We’ll book somewhere by phone.’

  Alison was looking at him as though he was mad. Perhaps he was mad. Perhaps they both were.

  She came down the stairs, dragging a Samsonite suitcase.

  ‘We’ll take your car,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave it in the long-stay carpark.’

  Alison didn’t answer.

  ‘We’ll tell the agent it’s an impromptu holiday,’ he said, throwing her suitcase into the back seat. ‘We’ll take the first place they suggest.’

  There was a travel agency just around the corner in Lygon Street. Alison dialled the number as they drove past. After a few minutes she said, ‘There’s a flight to Tahiti that leaves just after lunch. We can pay by credit card and collect our tickets at the airport.’

  Nick hesitated. Cash was harder to follow. But it was too late to worry about that now.

  ‘Why not,’ he said.

  The check-in clerk at Tullamarine Airport scarcely looked at Nick’s passport before handing him his ticket and boarding pass.

  While Alison went in search of bottled water Nick stood at an observation window and watched planes taking off and landing. He felt different, changed in some elemental way from the person he had been when he
entered Alison’s house. She returned with two bottles of water and handed him one. He wondered whether she had telephoned Corby. He no longer knew what she was capable of—or what he was capable of, for that matter.

  The departure lounge was full and then the plane was too crowded and the engines too noisy for them to talk, and yet talking was the only thing that was going to save them. Night came quickly once they were airborne. Alison was asleep or pretending to be. Among three hundred people, packed together like sardines, he felt shockingly alone. Somehow the hours passed. Pinpricks of light twinkled far below—the lights of tiny Pacific islands and of boats adrift in the immensity of the ocean. Otherwise there was nothing but black sea and black sky and the dancing image of an in-flight movie he was too preoccupied to listen to.

  The plane landed at Papeete just after 11 p.m. local time. Nick reached for Alison’s hand. She didn’t pull it away but nor did she return his squeeze. The humidity as they walked across the tarmac was suffocating. Nick imagined security guards waiting for him inside the terminal—jumpy men with guns and walkie-talkies.

  A welcoming phalanx of Tahitian women in traditional costumes greeted visitors with garlands of fragrant white flowers. Nick lowered his head to receive one. Looking around, Alison smiled—her first smile since they’d left Australia. ‘It suits you,’ she said.

  There were armed police everywhere. A young man in a brown uniform and shoulder holster was waving them towards the immigration counter. Nick walked forwards and pushed his passport through the glass. He smiled stiffly at the female official, who didn’t smile back. She glanced at the photograph before flicking through the pages of his passport. She typed something into her computer. The man in the brown uniform wandered over, murmured a few words in her ear, and walked away. The official picked up Alison’s passport.

  Any second now Nick expected to see police closing in. He suddenly felt ridiculous. He pictured himself on the front page of the Daily Star, handcuffed, wearing a garland of white flowers.

  The immigration official was handing back Alison’s passport. She gazed from one to the other and said. ‘You can go Monsieur. Madame.’

  On the other side of the immigration desk groups of smiling women held up placards bearing the names of big hotels. A beautiful Tahitian woman and an equally good-looking young man in traditional dress were holding a sign that said DREAMLAND. Behind it stood a whiteboard bearing a list of names: Shaw, Truman, Mercer (x2), Theobald, Lal (x2), Sarkozy, Ostell.

  Not long ago the Australian papers had been full of slavish praise for the new Dreamland Pacific resort, with its palm-thatched bungalows and its swim-up casino and its imported chefs. Dreamland Pacific was the jewel in Harry Grogan’s crown, the last word in opulence—a monument to hubris and fraudulent accounting that in a few short years would be flattened by a tropical typhoon. That was Dreamland: a vision and an illusion, uninsured and uninsurable.

  ‘We’ll need some local money,’ said Nick. ‘I’ve only got a few dollars.’ The bureau de change was closed for the night, but outside the terminal building Nick could see a branch of the Banque de Polynésie, complete with automatic teller machine.

  Nick noticed that the man in the brown uniform had followed them through immigration. He seemed to be waiting for Nick to do something.

  ‘I’m going to find the bathroom,’ said Alison. ‘Will you look after my suitcase?’

  Nick fed his credit card into the teller machine and typed some numbers and waited for the cash to appear. People were gathering around the DREAMLAND sign.

  It was an under-thirty-fives group—the sort of group that he and Alison could get lost in. Names were crossed off the whiteboard and the new arrivals were herded towards an airconditioned minivan standing outside the airport terminal.

  Nick counted his money. Alison had been gone nearly ten minutes. He wondered what was keeping her. Had she changed her mind? He was asking her to wait, to be patient, but what had he done to deserve her patience? If their situations had been reversed, would he have waited?

  All the names on the whiteboard had been crossed out except one: Truman. The beautiful couple representing Dreamland were looking at their watches and conferring. It was past midnight and the resort’s other guests were all aboard the minibus; Nick had watched a porter loading their luggage onto a steel trailer. There was still no sign of Alison. Perhaps she was lost. He looked over his shoulder at the waiting minibus. Impatient faces were pressed against the windows. Other passengers were already asleep.

  There were so many doors. The walls of the terminal building seemed to consist of nothing but doors. Was Alison behind one of them: an unwilling betrayer? One of the doors opened and closed again. Or a willing betrayer? Had he expected too much of her? He should not have left her alone. They should have stayed together.

  Nick stood with their two bags at his feet. This wasn’t working out as it was supposed to. He’d begged Alison to trust him and yet he couldn’t bring himself to trust her. If he owed her anything, he owed her the whole truth, but the whole truth was too much. It would leave him with nothing. How much truth could he give? How much truth could she bear?

  The low tropical clouds had burst and rain was slanting in under the awning. He loved Alison—more, perhaps, than he’d loved anyone—but love was no longer enough. He looked at his watch. Soon he would see her walking towards him.

  There was still no sign of Truman. The good-looking young man was folding up the whiteboard while his colleague gently ushered a fractious passenger back on board the bus. Suddenly Nick knew what he was going to do. If he didn’t act now, it would be too late. He didn’t expect Alison to forgive him at once but in the end she would realise it was the only way: he was doing this for both of them.

  The beautiful Tahitian tour guide was returning his smile. The sickening sadness he had felt on the plane lifted, like a weight that had been physically taken from him. His body seemed to quiver with nervous energy. He felt a surge of confidence, as if he’d done this before. Because he had done this before. He’d been doing it all his life, pretending to be somebody else. And he had a talent for it. Being somebody else was the only way he knew how to be himself. He put Alison’s suitcase behind a pillar.

  ‘Monsieur Truman,’ said the tour guide, reaching for his bag. ‘We were starting to wonder where you were.’