Crucifixion Creek Read online

  ‘Harry, I’ve just had Wagstaff in my ear. What’s the latest?’

  Harry fills him in.

  The superintendent grunts unhappily. ‘Deb Velasco with you?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Getting along all right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good. She’s a fine officer, Harry.’

  Harry wonders why he needs to say that. Is she under some kind of cloud? As he turns to look at her he sees her face illuminated by the flame beneath her cigarette.

  By the time the CIT officers release them, a bright clear day has dawned. The TOU tank has gone, as have the reporters and the TV crews and the sense of menace. Metal shutters are being raised in the windows of one or two of the neighbouring houses. As Harry makes his way to the car a woman, a wild-haired redhead, bursts out in front of him, coat flapping, listing under the weight of a large bag slung from her shoulder.

  ‘Harry!’ she cries, as if they are old friends. He tries to place her. Forensics? Domestic violence liaison?

  ‘Kelly Pool, Bankstown Chronicle.’ She thrusts out a hand which he ignores.

  ‘You’ve missed the fun,’ he says. ‘They’ve all buggered off.’

  ‘That’s okay, I was at the briefing. Same old speech—tragic death, detectives investigating, appeal for help from the public blah blah. But this is my patch, see. Crucifixion Creek. So what was the guy’s name?’ She snatches out a notepad and pen, standing poised as if she seriously expects him to tell her.

  ‘Piss off, Kelly Pool.’

  ‘Oh, Harry. That’s not nice.’

  ‘And how the hell do you know my name?’

  ‘I never reveal my sources. And a very famous name too, Harry Belltree. Son of the judge, right?’

  ‘No comment.’ Harry pushes past her and reaches for the car door handle.

  ‘I know this neighbourhood, Harry,’ she calls after him. ‘Maybe I can help you.’

  Deb has been listening to this exchange with interest. As she tugs at her seatbelt she looks across at him. ‘What was that all about? What judge?’ And then her eyes go wide and her jaw drops. ‘Belltree? Belltree! Oh fuck—Danny Belltree! “First Aboriginal judge of the New South Wales Supreme Court!” He was your dad?’

  ‘Just drive the car, Deb.’

  ‘How could I have missed that? Nobody told me! How come nobody told me?’

  He wonders about that.

  2

  Five hours later and twenty-two kilometres away, across the city to the north-east, an elderly woman puffs her way down the hill towards the bay. Phoebe Bulwer-Knight missed her bus and now she’s hurrying in case they give up on her and go home. The three of them have been meeting for brunch every Friday for over twenty years, ever since she retired from being Charlie’s secretary and bookkeeper, but she has missed the last four Fridays with her hip and the problems with the drains. Now she’s worried that the tradition may be broken. She should have phoned, of course she should, but she was already late.

  She reaches The Esplanade at last, and the curve of Balmoral Beach lies before her. The pale sand, the sweep of water across Middle Harbour, the little white figure of Grotto Point Lighthouse on the far headland, a ferry making its way up to Manly. The café on the corner and, yes, they are there, Grace and Charlie at their usual table, and she breathes a sigh of relief. They’re very still, she thinks as she gets closer. Concentrating on the ferry? Perhaps they’re having a bet on how long it will take to cross the bay. But no, their heads are bowed. They’re surely asleep, dozing as they wait for her to join them.

  When she does, she hesitates, a flutter of alarm rising in her chest. At the same moment the young waitress steps out onto the terrace and smiles at her. ‘They have a little sleep,’ she laughs, ‘for an hour now. Maybe more. I don’t want to wake them.’

  Phoebe is suddenly struck by their clothes. Both are wrapped in heavy coats that seem too big for them now, as if they’ve shrunk inside them. Charlie is almost smothered in his orange scarf—my muffler, he calls it—and though it is a mid-winter’s day, the sky is a brilliant blue and here in the sun it’s quite warm. And the state of Grace’s hair! An unruly tangle beneath a hat that looks as if it’s been in an accident. And their clothes are filthy. There is what looks like a soup stain down the front of Charlie’s good coat, and a tear in his sleeve. ‘Oh, Charlie,’ she whispers. ‘What happened to the Manly Dandy?’

  She reaches out and touches Charlie’s cheek. It is so cold she recoils as his head drops forward. ‘You must call an ambulance,’ she says to the waitress.

  ‘What? He is not well?’

  ‘I believe he’s dead.’

  ‘Oh my God! He has passed away? The lady will be so upset when she wakes.’

  ‘I think she’s dead too.’

  The girl shakes her head, eyes wide. ‘Both together…? Is that possible? Oh, that is so sad, but also…’ she struggles to find the right word, ‘…so beautiful. They go everywhere together. I have seen them, holding hands. And now they pass away together.’

  ‘Please just phone for an ambulance.’

  ‘Sure, sure.’ The girl takes a mobile from her pocket and makes the call, then points the phone at the old couple, and it makes a loud click. The girl starts jabbing away at it with her thumbs.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m sending to my friends. So sad, so beautiful.’

  ‘No…’ but Phoebe’s eyes blur, her knees buckle, and the waitress keeps tapping at her phone as she yells to her boss to come and help.

  3

  Harry drops his gear off in his locker and signs out. He walks to Parramatta station and catches a train packed with commuters in to Central. A twenty-minute walk up into Surry Hills takes him to his street, to the plane tree at the mouth of the laneway, bare of leaves. He can smell baking, hear the sound of an orchestra.

  She comes to the door as he steps inside, hugs him, says, ‘Oh, you stink.’

  ‘Sorry. My new partner. Smoker.’ He gazes at her face, the smudge of flour on her forehead, the smile on her lips and frown across her eyebrows, and his heart aches.

  ‘They said on the news there was a siege again last night. Were you called out?’

  ‘Yes. But we were just onlookers. The nasties did all the work.’

  He wipes Jenny’s forehead and she says, ‘What was that?’

  ‘Just flour. Any problems?’

  ‘I can’t find my good oven gloves. They must be somewhere in there.’

  ‘Let’s take a look.’

  They are in the middle of the kitchen table. He picks them up and puts them in her hands.

  ‘Thanks. Are you hungry?’

  ‘Yeah, but dirty. I’ll have a shower.’

  ‘You haven’t forgotten about lunch?’

  ‘No.’ It’s the anniversary. How could he forget?

  ‘Poor you. You probably just want to sleep.’

  Lunch is at Jenny’s sister’s house, which is thirty minutes away on a good day. Her husband, a builder, once came across Frank Lloyd Wright’s advice to a
house client to buy the cheapest site in a good neighbourhood because it would be difficult to build on, and therefore a bargain and a challenge and an opportunity for the great architect to do his stuff. Greg found a narrow and precipitous site on a gully overlooking a reserve, which the agent privately considered unbuildable, and paid a modest price for such a good suburb. The design that his architect devised was highly ingenious, with seven different floor levels tumbling down the slope and taking advantage of every angle of view and opportunity for sunshine and breeze. Unfortunately the engineering works, largely invisible beneath the ground, consumed most of the budget, and the house is still unfinished, limping slowly towards completion whenever Greg can scrape up the cash and spare his men from other jobs. It has, however, earned him a reputation as a builder for challenging small projects, and has brought him in a fair amount of work.

  But it is a nightmare for Harry, with its multitude of cascading steps, its unexpected shifts of direction, its jagged corners. He follows Jenny through the obstacles, tensing to leap forward to snatch her from danger. She seems oblivious to the risks, accepting the unreliable guidance of her two nieces and the remembered images in her head. But Greg is always making changes, and she can’t see those.

  They are nearing the difficult descent to the family room when Nicole rushes out of a bedroom, fiddling with her hair, hugs her sister and guides her down to safety. Harry hands over the chocolate cake that Jenny has baked for dessert and thankfully accepts a beer from Greg. Greg has already had a few, Harry judges, his gestures sweeping, verging on belligerent. He fetches a tray of meat from the kitchen and marches out to the barbecue on the deck with barely a word. Nicole notices and gives Harry an apologetic little smile. ‘It’s been a bad week,’ she whispers. ‘You know, people letting him down.’

  ‘Sure.’ He goes out onto the deck, where Greg is stabbing the meat. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Great.’ Greg spins around and yells through the door, ‘Nicole, where did you get this steak?’

  Harry doesn’t hear the reply. He goes over to the rail and looks down at the rock shelf far below. Something vanishes under a bush. Possum maybe.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, what?’ Greg is at his elbow. ‘Were you at that siege last night?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cops killed another poor bastard, didn’t they? Jeez mate, why do they even bother giving ’em tasers?’

  ‘He was high on ice and he’d just shot his girlfriend dead while we watched.’

  ‘Christ.’ Greg deflates all at once, the aggression abruptly gone. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he mumbles. ‘I don’t know how you do that stuff.’ He shakes his head. ‘How do you do it? Because of your mum and dad?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Nicole has this theory you went into homicide because…’ He shrugs.

  ‘Because what?’

  ‘You don’t really still think it was murder, do you?’

  ‘Someone ran them off the road. Either it was deliberate or they were criminally negligent. If it was an accident they should have stopped, tried to help, called triple-O.’

  ‘No evidence, Harry.’ Greg is almost pleading now. ‘The cops, the coroner, the press…No one found any real evidence of another vehicle.’

  ‘The paint scrape on the bodywork.’

  ‘From the fence post.’

  ‘No, wrong kind of paint.’

  Greg shakes his head. ‘I just…it can’t be good for Jenny, knowing you still think it was deliberate, having to live with that thought.’

  Harry says nothing.

  Greg hesitates, then presses on. His words are becoming a little slurred. ‘Nicole said Jenny’s been back to the specialists. Anything?’

  ‘Not really. No change. Not much they can do. We’ve got her name down for a dog.’

  ‘Oh.’ Greg runs out of steam again. He turns to the barbecue and lights up the burners.

  ‘I read about a case the other day,’ Harry goes on. ‘Bloke in America, same thing as Jenny—blindness arising from traumatic brain injury in a car smash. Nine years he was blind. Then one day he was struck by lightning, and his sight came back, just like that.’

  Greg stares at him, perhaps wondering if this is some kind of terrible joke. ‘Truly?’

  ‘Yes. That’s how it is. The problem’s in the brain, you see, not the eyes. They don’t understand how it works.’

  ‘Shit. I just think…Put it to bed, Harry, eh? All this raking in the past. It’s three years now. I mean, today, the anniversary thing, every year…’

  ‘And every day and every minute,’ Harry says quietly. ‘I’m going to get the bastards, Greg. Sooner or later, I’m going to get them.’

  Greg suddenly lurches to the rail and throws up. Harry hopes the possum got clear.

  On the drive back home Harry says, ‘So what’s the problem with Greg? Did Nicole say?’

  ‘It’s to do with work. She’s worried about him. He keeps it all to himself, and things get on top of him. She said I should try to persuade you to leave the force and join Greg and run the business side, let him concentrate on the building work. Could be a brilliant partnership, she said.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Nicole once confessed to him, after a few wines, that she thought he was selfish to do the work he did. What if he got hurt in the line of duty, where would that leave Jenny?

  He says, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Maybe. When you’ve had enough of what you’re doing now.’ Then, after a pause, ‘I overheard a bit of what Greg was saying to you about tracking down whoever caused the accident. I think he’s right, Harry. It’s not something you need to do. It wouldn’t bring your mum and dad back, and it wouldn’t help me to see again.’

  He thinks, is that how other people see me? A shell-shocked obsessive, compulsively scratching away at old wounds? Does Bob the Job believe that? The other guys in the squad?

  4

  At times like this Kelly Pool tends to brood on the past. When she was twenty-three, a hundred years ago, she managed to break a murder case while working for a small suburban newspaper. It was a combination of persistence and local knowledge—she unearthed the evidence police needed to crack the grieving husband’s alibi. In return, the cops gave the paper first lead on the story and acknowledged Kelly’s crucial role. For a dizzy, unbelievable spell she was a star.

  After a fortnight of record sales and international exposure, the paper’s owners threw a party for her at a top hotel in the city, where she drank a large amount of champagne and fell into conversation with a charming man who congratulated her and told her that she obviously had a huge future in front of her with one of the big nationals.

  ‘As long as it’s not one of Murdoch’s,’ she said, and began a rant about what rubbish they all were and how the editor of the Sydney paper was a total moron and sleazy scumbag. Full of her new self as beacon of journalistic integrity, she became more and more expansive. ‘I wouldn’t accept a job from him if he crawled across hot coals,’ she said, and the man smiled. ‘Oh, I don’t think there’s much chance of that,’ and bade her good night. A friend immediately appeared at her elbow, eyes bright with excitement. ‘How did it go?’ she asked.

 
‘What?’

  ‘With—’ She mentioned the name of the Murdoch editor. ‘That you were just talking to. Did he offer you the job?’

  She is still working for the small suburban newspaper. And at times like this, being sent out to interview some little old lady who’s lost her cat, or in this case her friends, Kelly lacerates herself with the bitter memory of the moment when her brilliant career crashed. It wasn’t fate, she tells herself. Fate guided her to the one big chance of a lifetime. It was a character flaw that made her blow it.

  And what kind of a name is Phoebe Bulwer-Knight anyway? What is she doing living here, among the Mahmoods and Cheongs and Krishnamurthis, the last survivor of a vanished Anglo-Saxon tribe? In Crucifixion Creek of all places.

  She leaves her car on the main road that forms the eastern boundary of the Creek because she’s not sure about taking it into Mortimer Street, which is narrow and has a reputation. The street sign has another hand-painted sign mounted on the pole beneath it, Crow Country. What Mrs Bulwer-Knight is doing here really is a puzzle, but not one Kelly has any wish to solve.

  As she makes her way along a line of tiny period villas, looking for number eleven, she is suddenly paralysed by a shattering noise. A gleaming Harley-Davidson with extravagant handlebars roars up alongside her and sidles past. Its rider turns his head to her, black helmet, black shades, ominous. Steroids, she thinks, from the bulging flesh of his tattooed neck and arms, and there’s a large red and orange logo on the back of his black leathers. She stares back, defiant. Fucking middle-aged teenager.

  ‘Grow up,’ she says, but he can’t hear over the Harley. He twists the throttle to a devastating pitch and speeds off.

  A little way down the street an elderly lady standing at the kerb gives a stately wave to the bikie as he roars past, and he waves back. Phoebe, Kelly realises. She approaches and shakes the lady’s hand. At the far end of the street the bikie is disappearing into what looks like a fortress—high steel walls, a watchtower, cameras, razor wire.