‘You stupid, mean-minded little fool!’ He was cringing away from me, scared of my anger and the croaking fury of my voice ‘What the hell do you know about a man like Ed Garrety? He didn’t go into the desert after the monster …’ I stopped there, leaning back, panting. Christ! The boy was right. If Ed Garrety wasn’t prospecting, then what the hell was he doing? I was thinking of Janet then, wondering how I could ever face her if I came out of the Gibson saying her father had taken his life because of a murder he had committed thirty years ago.
I drank the rest of my tea slowly, conscious of Kennie watching me all the time. Then I decided to close my eyes and tried to sleep. God, what a mess! And no way out that I could see.
We got going again shortly after five, and just before sunset a single-engine plane came over. It must have picked up our dust streamer for it came in very low from the north, circled us slowly, then headed back into the fireball blaze that was reddening sky and desert.
We made better progress that night, fewer stops and only one puncture. We caught a frozen ice-glint glimpse of the great salt lake in the dawn and by nine we had reached Karara Soaks The police were waiting for us there, a sergeant and a constable with two Land-Rovers and native trackers. The sergeant had a warrant for my arrest.
Fremantle Gaol, 30th April,1970.
CHAPTER SIX
Well, there it is — the whole truth of how I came to Australia and what happened to me there. I have been working on it for over two-and-half months, sometimes in the library, sometimes in my cell here. At least I have been honest with myself, or as honest as I am ever likely to be, and now that it is finished I shall give it to my lawyer and he will have to decide how much needs to be revealed in my defence when the Lone Minerals action comes up for hearing in a fortnight’s time. In any case, it has served some purpose. It has kept me mentally occupied so that I’m still reasonably sane, even if I have been living in a kind of vacuum.
The only thing that really worries me is Janet. I would like to have broken the news of her father’s death to her myself. But the sergeant took me straight to the police station at Mt Newman. I had pustules on my legs where the spinifex spines had set up sores that were beginning to turn septic and he wasn’t taking any chances. It was 70 miles to Jarra Jarra and 70 back — another day’s driving. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘she’ll have heard of it by now.’ Which was probably true since he had radioed a report back from the Soaks.
I have written to her, of course. I did that shortly after I arrived here, a difficult letter because I did not want her to know how McIlroy had met his death or that her father had deliberately gone out into that sandstorm. I thought she might have read between the lines and guessed it was suicide, but maybe she didn’t want to. Maybe she wanted to believe that I was in some way to blame for his death. At any rate, I have had no letter from her, not a line all the time I have been here — 81 days to be exact. I don’t blame her, and with the station wrapped round her neck, all the problems of her father’s death magnified by the financial mess he was in, she probably hasn’t much time. But I am sorry all the same. Somehow a letter from her would have made a difference. And Kennie … Kennie might have made an effort to see me.
It was the feeling of being alone in Australia, without one single friend, that started me writing a full account of all that had happened. I finished it yesterday. I suppose the idea originated from that journal, a record while it was still clear in my mind. As I say, it kept me sane in my solitary, friendless state, cooped up in my cell here with the sunlight swinging across the bare little room, day giving way to night, to dawn again and the glimpse of an endlessly blue sky, my weekly visits to the remand court at Perth the only relief from the monotony of it.
My lawyer has been almost my only visitor, a short, dark man, with eyes that dart restlessly, behind heavy-framed glasses. His name is Chick Draper, and although his manner is deliberately abrupt, he is a kind fellow and has taken a great deal of trouble on my behalf, even though he knows he hasn’t much hope of a worthwhile fee. It started as a straightforward immigration case — entering the country under a false name and with a false passport. He advised me to plead guilty, since the alternative might be extradition to face criminal charges of arson and fraud in England. This I did and was remanded in custody pending further inquiries. I hadn’t enough money for bail, even if they would have granted it, so there was nothing for it but to watch the Australian autumn fading into winter from my cell while the immigration people and my lawyer tried to sort the tangle out. And then just when he thought he was getting somewhere, he was faced with the further charge of fraud while on Australian soil.
This was brought against me by Lone Minerals shortly after I was remanded in custody the second time. Their No. 2 drill hole had given more samples showing 0.2 nickel in pentlandite over a band width of 15 feet at a depth of 600 feet. It was this news, confirming the optimism of their annual report, that had caused the shares to rise so dramatically back in January. They had fallen just as fast since, for Freeman had brought in extra equipment and half a dozen holes drilled in quick succession had shown no trace of nickel. Following this announcement the shares hit an all-time low of 12 cents and there was an outcry from both the public and the Sydney and Perth stock exchanges. I was the obvious scapegoat and I suppose I should have realized that proceedings were inevitable once I had agreed to plead guilty to the immigration charges, for if I wasn’t Alec Falls then I had no right to pose as a mining consultant.
By pleading guilty my lawyer had hoped for a shorter sentence and permission to remain in Australia under my second name of Wentworth, which was my mother’s family name. But with a criminal charge pending he had agreed I should change my plea to one of not guilty when the immigration charge came up for hearing again. And then Kadek came to see me.
Ever since my arrest, it had puzzled me how the authorities could have known I could have entered the country on the passport of a man supposedly dead. There was always, of course, the outside chance that a zealous immigration official had been sent a copy of one of the English papers that had reported the Drym fire. But it was really too much of a coincidence, and at that first court appearance no evidence had been given covering this point. It had to be either Kadek or Rosa — they were the only ones who knew. And after Kedak had visited me here in prison I had no doubt who had tipped them off. Not that he admitted it, but it was there all the same, implicitly understood between us.
The date of Kadek’s visit was February 23, just four days after I had been informed of the Lone Minerals action. He was seated when I was brought into the interview room and he got up very abruptly. But he didn’t come forward to greet me, nor did he shake hands. I remember feeling at the time there was something almost guilty about the way he had started to his feet. ‘Sorry about this,’ he said with a gesture that seemed to include, not just the room, or even the prison, but the whole system. He had the same slim briefcase with him and he held on to it through the whole interview. ‘Treating you all right, I hope?’
I nodded. ‘All right.’ The same steel-trap mouth, not the flicker of a smile, and his eyes slitted as though he had brought the sun’s glare in with him. ‘I get bored, that’s all.’ That was before I started writing.
He sat down again and I took the other chair, facing him across the table. The door shut and we were alone. ‘Well?’ I asked. He still seemed hesitant, as though he didn’t know quite how to begin, and I said, ‘Is it about Lone Minerals? Is that why you are here?’