Scrublands

by Chris Hammer

  PRAISE FOR

  SCRUBLANDS

  ‘Brilliant and unsettling, Scrublands stands at the junction of Snowtown and Wake in Fright, that place where Australia’s mirage of bush tranquility evaporates into our hidden fears.’ Paul Daley, writer and journalist

  ‘A superbly drawn, utterly compelling evocation of a small town riven by a shocking crime.’ Mark Brandi, author of Wimmera

  ‘A clever, intricate mystery…a complex, compelling story deeply rooted in its small-town setting. Highly recommended.’ Dervla McTiernan, author of The Ruin

  ‘Scrublands kidnapped me for 48 hours. I was hopelessly lost in the scorching Australian landscape, disoriented but completely immersed in the town and people of Riversend, as the heat crackled off the pages. I was devastated when it was time to go back to the real world. This book is a force of nature. A must-read for all crime fiction fans.’ Sarah Bailey, author of The Dark Lake and Into the Night

  ‘Hammer’s portrait of a dying, drought-struck town numbed by a priest’s unimaginable act of violence will capture you from the first explosive page and refuse to let go until the last. His remarkable writing takes you inside lives twisted by secrets festering beneath the melting heat of the inland, the scrub beyond waiting to burst into flame. Scrublands is the read of the year. Unforgettable.’ Tony Wright, Associate Editor and Special Writer, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald

  ‘A compulsively page-turning thriller where the parched interior looms as large as the characters.’ Katharine Murphy, Guardian Australia

  Chris Hammer was a journalist for more than thirty years, dividing his career between covering Australian federal politics and international affairs. For many years he was a roving foreign correspondent for SBS TV’s flagship current affairs program Dateline. In Canberra, his roles included chief political correspondent for The Bulletin, current affairs correspondent for SBS TV and a senior political journalist for The Age. During the summer of 2008–09, at the height of the millennial drought, Chris travelled extensively throughout eastern Australia researching his non-fiction book, The River, published in 2010 to critical acclaim. The drought, his journey through the Murray–Darling Basin and time spent in the New South Wales Riverina inspired the setting for Scrublands. Chris has a bachelor’s degree in journalism and a master’s degree in international relations. He lives in Canberra.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  First published in 2018

  Copyright © Chris Hammer 2018

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100

  Email:info@allenandunwin.com

  Web:www.allenandunwin.com

  ISBN 978 1 76063 298 4

  eISBN 978 1 76063 633 3

  Map by Aleksander J. Potočnik

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Luke Causby/Blue Cork

  Cover image: Getty Images

  FOR TOMOKO

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  ONE: RIVERSEND

  TWO: THE BLACK DOG

  THREE: BLOODY SUNDAY

  FOUR: GHOSTS

  FIVE: THE PLAIN

  SIX: SCRUBLANDS

  SEVEN: THE DRAGON

  EIGHT: STALKER

  NINE: BELLINGTON

  TEN: MURDER

  ELEVEN: NEWSBREAKERS

  TWELVE: AN ALLEGORICAL TALE

  THIRTEEN: THE HOTEL

  FOURTEEN: BLOOD MOON

  FIFTEEN: SUICIDE

  SIXTEEN: FUGITIVE

  SEVENTEEN: CHARGED

  EIGHTEEN: BAILED

  NINETEEN: WATER UNDER THE BRIDGE

  TWENTY: GRAVEROBBERS

  TWENTY - ONE: OUTLAWS

  TWENTY - TWO: THIRTY

  TWENTY - THREE: THE CELL

  TWENTY - FOUR: THE CORPSE

  TWENTY - FIVE: WIRED

  TWENTY - SIX: BONFIRE

  TWENTY - SEVEN: THE BRIDGE

  TWENTY - EIGHT: LIFE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THE DAY IS STILL. THE HEAT, HAVING EASED DURING THE NIGHT, IS BUILDING again; the sky is cloudless and unforgiving, the sun punishing. Across the road, down by what’s left of the river, the cicadas are generating a wall of noise, but there’s silence surrounding the church. Parishioners begin to arrive for the eleven o’clock service, parking across the road in the shade of the trees. Once three or four cars have arrived, their occupants emerge into the brightness of the morning and cross the road, gathering outside St James to make small talk: stock prices, the scarcity of farm water, the punitive weather. The young priest, Byron Swift, is there, still dressed casually, chatting amiably with his elderly congregation. Nothing seems amiss; everything appears normal.

  Craig Landers, owner and manager of Riversend’s general store, approaches. He’s going hunting with his mates, but they’ve stopped by the church so he can have a few words with the priest beforehand. His friends have tagged along. Like Craig, none of them are regular churchgoers. Gerry Torlini lives down in Bellington and doesn’t know any of the parishioners, so he returns to his four-wheel drive, but local farmers Thom and Alf Newkirk mingle, as does Horrie Grosvenor. Alf’s son Allen, surrounded by people more than three times his age, joins Gerry in the cab of his truck. If anyone thinks the men look incongruous in their shooting gear, a strange mix of camouflage and high-vis, no one says so.

  The priest sees Landers and walks over. The men shake hands, smile, exchange a few words. Then the priest excuses himself, and enters the church to prepare for the service and don his vestments. Having said his piece, Landers is keen to leave, but Horrie and the Newkirks are deep in conversation with some farmers, so he walks towards the side of the church, seeking shade. He’s almost there when the babble of conversation abruptly ceases; he turns to see the priest has emerged from the church and is standing at the top of the short flight of steps. Byron Swift has changed into his robes, crucifix glinting as it catches the sun, and he’s carrying a gun, a high-powered hunting rifle with a scope. It makes no sense to Landers; he’s still confused as Swift raises the gun to his shoulder and calmly shoots Horrie Grosvenor from a distance of no more than five metres. Grosvenor’s head ruptures in a red cloud and his legs give way. He falls to the ground like a sack, as if his bones no longer exist. Conversation stops, heads turn. There’s a silent moment as people struggle for comprehension. The priest fires again, another body falls: Thom Newkirk. There is no screaming, not yet, but there is panic, silent desperation as people start running. Landers bolts for the corner of the church as another shot goes screaming out into the world. He rounds the end of the wall, gaining momentary safety. But he doesn’t stop running; he knows it’s him the priest most wants to kill.

  MARTIN SCARSDEN STOPS THE CAR ON THE BRIDGE LEADING INTO TOWN, LEAVING the engine running. It’s a single-lane bridge—no overtaking, no passing—built decades ago, the timber milled from local river red gums. It’s slung across th
e flood plain, long and rambling, desiccated planks shrunken and rattling, bolts loose, spans bowed. Martin opens the car door and steps into the midday heat, ferocious and furnace-dry. He places both hands on the railing, but such is the heat of the day that even wood is too hot to touch. He lifts them back, bringing flaking white paint with them. He wipes them clean, using the damp towel he has placed around his neck. He looks down to where the river should be and sees instead a mosaic of cracked clay, baked and going to dust. Someone has carted an old fridge out to where the water once ran and left it there, having first painted a sign on its door: FREE BEER—HONOUR SYSTEM. The red gums along the banks don’t get the joke; some of their branches are dead, others support sparse clumps of khaki leaves. Martin tries lifting his sunglasses, but the light is dazzling, too bright, and he lowers them again. He reaches back into the car and cuts the engine. There is nothing to hear; the heat has sucked the life from the world: no cicadas, no cockatoos, not even crows, just the bridge creaking and complaining as it expands and contracts in thrall to the sun. There is no wind. The day is so very hot, it tugs at him, seeking his moisture; he can feel the heat rising through the thin leather soles of his city shoes.

  Back in the rental car, air-conditioning straining, he moves off the bridge and down into Riversend’s main street, into the sweltering bowl below the levee banks. There are cars parked here. They sit reversed into the kerb at a uniform forty-five-degree angle: utes and farm trucks and city sedans, all of them dusty and none of them new. He drives slowly, looking for movement, any sign of life, but it’s like he’s driving through a diorama. Only as he passes through the first intersection a block on from the river, past a bronze soldier on a column, does he see a man shuffling along the footpath in the shade of the shop awnings. He is wearing, of all things, a long grey overcoat, his shoulders stooped, his hand clutching a brown paper bag.

  Martin stops the car, reverses it assiduously at the requisite angle, but not assiduously enough. He grimaces as the bumper scrapes against the kerb. He pulls on the handbrake, switches off the engine, climbs out. The kerb is almost knee-high, built for flooding rains, adorned now by the rear end of his rental. He thinks of moving the car forward, off the concrete shoal, but decides to leave it there, damage done.

  He crosses the street and enters the shade of the awnings, but there’s no sign of the shuffling man. The street is deserted. Martin regards the shopfronts. The first has a hand-painted sign taped to the inside of the glass door: MATHILDA’S OP SHOP AND ANTIQUES. PRE-LOVED CLOTHING, KNICK-KNACKS AND CURIOS. OPEN TUESDAY AND THURSDAY MORNINGS. This Monday lunchtime, the door is locked. Martin inspects the window display. There’s a black beaded cocktail dress on an old dressmaker’s mannequin; a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, hem a little frayed, held aloft on a wooden clothes hanger; and a garish set of orange work overalls draped across the back of a chair. A stainless-steel bin contains a collection of discarded umbrellas, dusty with disuse. On one wall there’s a poster showing a woman in a one-piece swimming suit luxuriating on a beach towel while behind her waves lick at the sand. MANLY SEA AND SURF, says the poster, but it has sat in the window too long and the Riverina sun has leached the red from her swimmers and the gold from the sand, leaving only a pervasive pale blue wash. Along the bottom of the window is an array of shoes: bowling shoes, golf shoes, some well-worn riding boots and a pair of polished brown brogues. Dotted around them like confetti are the bodies of flies. Dead men’s shoes, Martin decides.

  The shop next door is empty, a yellow and black FOR LEASE sign in the window, the outline still legible from where the paint has been stripped from the window: HAIR TODAY. He takes out his phone and snaps a few photos, visual prompts for when he’s writing. The next store is entirely shuttered: a weatherboard façade with two small windows, both boarded up. The door is secured with a rusty chain and brass padlock. It looks as if it’s been like that for a lifetime. Martin takes a photo of the chained door.

  Returning to the other side of the road, Martin can again feel the heat through his shoes and he avoids patches of oozing bitumen. Gaining the footpath and the relief of the shade, he’s surprised to find himself looking at a bookstore, right by where he’s parked his car: THE OASIS BOOKSTORE AND CAFE says a sign hanging from the awning, the words carved into a long slab of twisting wood. A bookstore. Fancy that. He hasn’t brought a book with him, hasn’t even thought of it until now. His editor, Max Fuller, rang at dawn, delivering his brainwave, assigning him the story. Martin packed in a rush, got to the airport with moments to spare, downloaded the clippings he’d been emailed, been the last passenger across the tarmac and onto the plane. But a book would be good; if he must endure the next few days in this husk of a town, then a novel might provide some distraction. He tries the door, anticipating it too may be locked. Yet the Oasis is open for business. Or the door is, at least.

  Inside, the shop is dark and deserted, the temperature at least ten degrees cooler. Martin removes his sunglasses, eyes adjusting to the gloom after the blowtorch streetscape. There are curtains across the shopfront’s plate-glass windows and Japanese screens in front of them, adding an extra barricade against the day. A ceiling fan is barely revolving; the only other movement is water trickling across slate terraces on a small, self-contained water feature sitting atop the counter. The counter is next to the door, in front of the window, facing an open space. Here, there are a couple of couches, some slouching armchairs placed on a worn rug, together with some book-strewn occasional tables. Running towards the back of the store are three or four ranks of shoulder-high bookshelves with an aisle up the middle and aisles along either side. The side walls support higher shelves. At the back of the shop, at the end of the aisle, there is a wooden swing door of the type that separates kitchens from customers in restaurants. If the bookshelves were pews, and the counter an altar, then this might be a chapel.

  Martin walks past the tables to the far wall. A small sign identifies it as LITERATURE. A wry smile begins to stretch across his face but its progress is halted as he regards the top shelf of books. There, neatly aligned with only their spines showing, are the books he read and studied twenty years ago at university. Not just the same titles, but the same battered paperback editions, arranged like his courses themselves. There is Moby Dick, The Last of the Mohicans and The Scarlet Letter, sitting to the left of The Great Gatsby, Catch-22 and Herzog. There’s The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, For Love Alone and Coonardoo, leading to Free Fall, The Trial and The Quiet American. There’s a smattering of plays: The Caretaker, Rhinoceros and The Chapel Perilous. He pulls out a Penguin edition of A Room with a View, its spine held together by adhesive tape turned yellow with age. He opens it, half expecting to see the name of some forgotten classmate, but instead the name that greets him is Katherine Blonde. He replaces the book, careful not to damage it. Dead woman’s books, he thinks. He takes out his phone and snaps a photograph.

  Sitting on the next shelf down are newer books, some looking almost untouched. James Joyce, Salman Rushdie, Tim Winton. He can’t discern any pattern in their arrangement. He pulls one out, then another, but there are no names written inside. He takes a couple of books and is turning to sit in one of the comfortable armchairs when he is startled, flinching involuntarily. A young woman has somehow appeared at the end of the central aisle.

  ‘Find anything interesting?’ she asks, smiling, her voice husky. She’s leaning nonchalantly against a bookshelf.

  ‘I hope so,’ says Martin. But he’s nowhere near as relaxed as he sounds. He’s disconcerted: at first by her presence and now by her beauty. Her hair is blonde, cut into a messy bob, fringe brushing black eyebrows. Her cheekbones are marble, her eyes sparkling green. She’s wearing a light summer dress and her feet are bare. She doesn’t belong in the narrative he’s been constructing about Riversend.

  ‘So who’s Katherine Blonde?’ he asks.

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘Tell her I like her books.’

  ‘Can’t. She�
��s dead.’

  ‘Oh. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. If you like books, she’d like you. This was her shop.’

  They stand looking at each other for a moment. There is something unapologetic about the way she regards him, and Martin is the first to break eye contact.

  ‘Sit down,’ she says. ‘Relax for a bit. You’ve come a long way.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘This is Riversend,’ she says, offering a sad smile. She has dimples, Martin observes. She could be a model. Or a movie star. ‘Go on, sit down,’ she says. ‘Want a coffee? We’re a cafe as much as we’re a bookshop. It’s how we make our money.’

  ‘Sure. Long black, thanks. And some water, please.’ He finds himself longing for a cigarette, even though he hasn’t smoked since university. A cigarette. Why now?

  ‘Good. I’ll be right back.’

  She turns and walks soundlessly back down the aisle. Martin watches her the whole way, admiring the curve of her neck floating above the bookshelves, his feet still anchored to the same spot as when he first saw her. She passes through the swing door at the back of the store and is gone, but her presence lingers: the cello-like timbre of her voice, the fluid confidence of her posture, her green eyes.

  The door stops swinging. Martin looks down at the books in his hands. He sighs, derides himself as pathetic and takes a seat, looking not at the books but at the backs of his forty-year-old hands. His father had possessed tradesman’s hands. When Martin was a child they had always seemed so strong, so assured, so purposeful. He’d always hoped, assumed that one day his hands would be the same. But to Martin they still seem adolescent. White-collar hands, not working-class hands, somehow inauthentic. He takes a seat—a creaking armchair with tattered upholstery, tilting to one side—and starts leafing absent-mindedly through one of the books. This time she doesn’t startle him as she enters his field of vision. He looks up. Time has passed.