‘Fuck it, I’ll put you on the way. Give us a smoke for the road.’
I opened my hands. ‘They’ve all gone.’
‘That’d be right.’
We set off. Some of the kids ran alongside us for longer than you’d imagine, keeping up better than you’d think possible. Eventually they dropped off and stood waving. I waved my arm out of the window until the next turn in the track. Lewis drove fast, threw up a lot of dust and it took a lot of concentration to keep in touch with him. He was testing me, showing me who was boss and I just had to cop it. I’d probably have done the same in his place. My shirt was a wet rag clinging to my body when Lewis stopped at a crossroad. He pointed, made sure I’d seen the direction, and drove off.
There was a six-pack of Fourex in the back of the Pajero. I pulled in under a tree and drank two cans, scarcely taking a breath in between. I sat in the shade and looked out at the lush, green landscape. The air was barely moving but it seemed to carry a dozen different scents on it, none of which I recognised. Birds flew about and I couldn’t identify any of them either, or the trees they inhabited. I realised just how citified I was and, although it was an uncomfortable feeling, it was way, way too late to do anything about it. The beer had made me sleepy and the last thing I wanted to do was fall asleep under a tree in the middle of nowhere. The insects would love that.
It was late in the afternoon but still hot. I splashed cold water on my face, drank some, stuffed half a packet of chewing gum into my mouth and drove on in the direction indicated. I hadn’t asked Lewis how far it was and was thinking of consulting my map when a few buildings appeared on the horizon and another vehicle overtook me. The driver waved and I waved back, mostly out of relief. The dirt gave away to bitumen and signs began to confirm that Mossman would be reachable before dark.
I was shocked at the state of the Pajero when I pulled in at the first motel I saw. The vehicle was covered in grey dust so its original colour was a matter of guesswork. No-one else gave it a second look. I checked in, unpacked minimally and spent an hour in the swimming pool. Not for the first time I looked at my stubble and contemplated a beard. A mature look, reliable. The grey I saw among the black decided me against it.
I had my usual motel dinner of biscuits, chips and nuts, two more beers and fell asleep. I dreamed I was cutting sugarcane in a huge field. It was the middle of the day and the sun was beating down fiercely. I could hear snakes rustling in the cane. A gang of kanakas arrived and I thought they were going to help but they stood around and smoked their clay pipes and laughed at me.
PART TWO
15
I checked at the airport and railway and bus stations, showed Clinton’s photo and didn’t get a whiff of him. Likewise at the wharf. I wasn’t surprised. He could have bought another car, but I wasn’t going to spend time on that possibility. He might’ve hitchhiked out for all I knew. All my enquiry told me that he was gone and that was all I really needed to know. I drove back to Cairns and handed over the Pajero, after putting it through a car wash and cleaning it out a bit inside. I kept the maps. I could plot my movements on them as further evidence for Nickless of my dedication to duty. I cursed myself for not getting the name of the Aboriginal settlement, then decided that it didn’t matter. I’d been there and learned things, none of them useful to Nickless but possibly helpful to me.
I gave the Akubra to an Aboriginal kid working in the airport garden. I kept the boots. I had a last Fourex in the airport bar while waiting for the flight to Brisbane and read through the Sydney Morning Herald to see what I’d been missing. Not much. The Olympics were drawing closer and I was still tossing up whether to stay and go to the boxing and watch the marathon or give the whole thing a miss and spend the fortnight on Norfolk Island. No chance of tickets to the swimming or athletics and I wasn’t sure I wanted to be around when the tourists flooded in. Some people said you could rent your house out for a fortune and others said you couldn’t. I remained in two minds.
Divided loyalties make for uneasiness, as every adulterer knows. All the way back to Sydney, including the wait at Brisbane, while I was trying to read the Irving book I was really worrying about how I stood with Wesley Scott and Rex Nickless. Their interests weren’t identical but not diametrically opposed either. Wesley stood on the higher moral ground. Nickless had paid for the Queensland trip which had yielded some things but nothing conclusive. My only way forward now was to pursue the clue Mark Alessio and Kathy Simpson had thrown up-the identity of ‘Tank’- and that had arisen from my own, self-financed endeavours. I couldn’t decide quite who I was working for, but I knew that Wesley deserved to know that his boy was still alive and relatively unharmed two months ago.
Sydney was warmish but it felt cool after Queensland. The air was lousy. Clive gave me my mail and said that no-one had tried to burgle my house. He sounded disappointed not to have had a chance to use his lead pipe. The mail was routine stuff and there was nothing pressing in the answering machine messages. There were a couple of small jobs on offer and I could deal with them while still pursuing Clinton Scott. I phoned Harry Tickener at The Challenger and asked him if anyone connected with sport had been killed in the last week or so.
‘Not that I’ve heard of. A few should have been, of course, if there was any justice.’
Harry, a green baize fanatic, would be talking about professional snooker players who interested me about as much as synchronised swimmers.
‘No gymnasium types, personal trainers, people like that?’
‘What a weird question. Tried to call you a couple of days ago for a drink. Where’ve you been?’
‘Queensland.’
‘That explains it. They’re all a bit light-sensitive up there.’
I felt like arguing. There was nothing deficient about Roger, Beth, Tommy or Ranger Lewis, but I didn’t bother. We arranged to meet for a drink in two days. I admired my tan under the shower and washed some clothes. I spent the evening cleaning my Rossis and knocking out an interim report on the word processor for Nickless. I still hadn’t spent all of his money and I suspected that Clinton was in the same boat. I felt an odd bond with him. I told Nickless about the inflammable Land Rover and said that I’d picked up a few leads to pursue in Sydney. Half-true. Among my ragtail collection of books were a couple of paperbacks, acquired when I was a disenchanted law student thinking about switching to anthropology. I never made the switch. Kinship systems bored me as much as contract law. I browsed through A. P. Elkins’ The Australian Aborigines, reading up on ‘revenge killings’ and ‘revenge expeditions’.
The next morning, early, I presented myself at Wesley’s gym. I took my program card from the rack and winced when I saw how long it had been since my last workout. Riding around in a 4WD in Queensland and drinking Bundaberg rum wouldn’t have done anything for my fitness. I started off on the bike at a lower grade than when I’d last been and after fifteen minutes I was dripping. I moved onto the machines and, even though I reduced the weight stacks and the repetitions, I struggled.
The gym was busy with most of the machines in use and the basketball players occupying a lot of space. I saw Wesley emerge from the massage room but it was a while before he saw me. I was battling with the leg press and had to reduce the weight to get through the set. Wesley noticed and almost cracked a smile. I was a ruin when I finished but I didn’t stint. I spent the full time on the most boring part of the business, stretching, looped my damp towel around my neck and approached Wesley. He was rubbing the shoulder of a footballer, a big area.