Читать книгу Dark Clouds on the Mountain - John Tully - Страница 8

Three-thirty in the morning: the dead hour when you start to see things and even atheists might start to believe in ghosts. Jack had polished off a stale ham and cheese sandwich from Gobble-and-Go and it lay like cardboard in his stomach, repeating like the catechism he'd been forced to learn as a child. A sheet of iron tap-tapped loosely in the wind atop a nearby building, cats prowled and mewled and spat among the garbage cans in the alleys and the sky was full of moving clouds and the dust of stars. 'Mud and stars,' mused Jack, 'that was what life was all about.' There would be a frost tonight and the cats would huddle in hidden corners under the splendour of the heavens.

Jack and DC Bishop were cooped up, sitting at a side window on the first floor of the hotel at the corner of Bathurst and Argyle Streets. There was a clear view of the synagogue over the road. Inside it was dreary: a faded 1960s 'feature wall' that was once a dark mauve, a Gideons' Bible, a double bed that sagged sadly under a bobbled blue cover from the weight of generations of guests, and a romantic scene from Tahiti in a fake gilt frame on the opposite wall. The carpet begged to be retired and the cold tap in the sink in the corner dribbled like a hungry schoolboy smelling fish and chips and vinegar. Some ancient copies of Australasian Post with cover girls who must now be in nursing homes completed the world inside this travelling salesman's temporary lodging. Three nights now they'd sat there without catching sight of the dauber, or of any other miscreant, bar the odd speeding hoon and furtive lurker.

Time seemed frozen. A taxi driver parked outside for a while, picking his nose so obsessively that Jack thought of leaning out the window and warning him that the ancient Egyptians used to draw the brain out through the nasal passage during their funerary rites. Finally, the man drove off. He would get slim pickings tonight, Jack thought with a wry smile; the pubs were shut and the Casino merely ticking over at midweek.

A solitary drunk wove his way slowly northwards as if he were putting into practice the message of Lenin's pamphlet, 'One Step Forward, Two Steps Back'. (Jack had read it once long ago in the Ogre's lounge room when he was at a loose end during a wet Sunday afternoon when Tracey was studying for exams, just before he joined the cops. Why he had bothered, he couldn't really say.) The drunk wasn't happy, from the way he cursed the cars and muttered to himself. 'Fuckin' pub's shut,' he raged, hammering on the doors under the window before rolling off disconsolately northwards.

The cigarette fumes were so thick in the room that their eyes were smarting. Jack looked at his watch. Three-fifty. Bugger it, he thought, time for a half decent coffee instead of the instant slop the management had provided. It might also dislodge the excuse for a sandwich from where it clung to his stomach lining. He'd buy a packet of fags too: full-strength Marlboro despite the old cowboys who now inhaled through holes in their throats. Suppressing the thought with a shudder, he slipped downstairs and outside into the chill. Winter was definitely coming, with the wind gusting up from the river with the smell of salt, fish and diesel on its breath, setting the loose piece of iron tapping again. He walked stiffly round the corner to his own car and drove out via Elizabeth Street to the Renown Milk Bar in North Hobart.

The Renown was an institution that went way back. It had always stayed open late, serving coffee and chocolate to late-night taxi drivers, insomniacs, marijuana-affected teenagers with what Jack still thought of as the munchies in 1970s argot, back-door-men, police, roisterers, thirsty tarts and the nocturnal desperates found in any city. The drunk they'd seen earlier was just leaving, spilling cigarettes and matches behind him. Jack had often called here in the small hours when Wendy had been a baby and he had driven her round in the car to try to get her to go off to sleep. Tonight, the streets were almost empty and he only just caught the tired proprietor as she was about to close up for the night.

There was only one other customer; an eccentric night owl they called Hilary. Hilary Green. The name - or nickname - was suitably androgynous; Hilary was dressed in almost feminine clothing with an enormous sprig of lavender in his buttonhole. He smiled in greeting, the faded almost feminine beauty of his face a mass of old acne scars, as he looked up from a plateful of Turkish delight and a cup of hot chocolate, his version of a balanced meal. Harmless, chronically workless, garrulous when given a chance, Hilary had scarcely seen the sun in fifteen years, spending his days sleeping in a lonely room at the top of an old house in Swan Street, going out in daylight only when he needed to put his dole forms in. Most nights he padded silent as a cat under the stars, out as far as Nutgrove Beach or the New Town rivulet, mourning his lost youth and hoping against hope to find some man as desperate and chronically insomniac as himself.

Occasionally, he had been able to pass on a snippet of very good intelligence to Jack. At the weekends he stayed indoors even at night out of fear of the packs who hunted his kind after closing time. He wasn't afraid of Jack for, unlike some other coppers in less PC days, Jack had never been a poofter basher and didn't judge him or dismiss him with a sneer. Hilary gratefully returned Jack's nod. The proprietor frothed up the milk for Jack's coffees, smiling thinly, too tired to talk. Hilary stood up to leave, anxious to be home before dawn. Halfway out the door, he asked Jack if he'd caught the synagogue graffitist yet. Jack shrugged and drew on his cigarette. 'Why, do you know something, Mr Green?' Jack asked.

Hilary smiled archly. 'Oh, nothing, officer. I just hear that they are swanning around, so to speak. I do wish you'd wear a uniform, though.' He winked and was gone.

Jack finished his cigarette and lit another. Swanning around, Hilary had said. What the hell was that supposed to mean? He dismissed it. Hilary would do anything to talk to a halfway handsome man, even one going to seed like himself. Jack's eyes idly flicked over the windows and he did a double take. He had caught a glimpse of a face in the window. It was there only for a second, and then it was gone. He could have sworn it was the moon face of Gordon Paisley, but when he looked outside the street was deserted, except for a young man and woman emerging from a red Sandman panel van at the kerb. don't laugh, it could be your daughter and if it's rockin', don't bother knockin', proclaimed a pair of stickers on the back doors of the 'shaggin'wagon'. The sides were adorned with what the van fraternity called 'murals'; airbrushed decals of sunsets on desert islands or science fiction scenes of androids and asteroids. This always amused Jack. The boy racers seemed to have no insight into the strangeness of their own habitat. An island is by definition a place apart and Tasmania was impossibly remote and exotic even for mainlanders but for these descendants of convicts and Currency Boys and Girls it was just home. Years ago, Jack and Helen had visited her cousins in America. The smokestacks and sulphur smells of Akron, a city built on the last folds of the Alleghenies just south of the Great Lakes, had seemed strange to Jack, but the cousins had marvelled at meeting people from outlandish Tasmania. The van throbbed off up the street but of Paisley, there was not a trace. Sleep deprivation did funny things to the brain, Jack knew. No doubt it was a memory that had printed itself on his retina and, besides, Paisley was too lazy to be out at this hour, wasn't he, although he lived not all that far away up the hill in West Hobart.

When Jack got back to Argyle Street, he saw movement in the shadows in front of the synagogue. Good Christ! Jack looked up at the hotel window, but it was empty. What was that fool Bishop doing? A huge newly painted swastika crouched like an evil insect on the synagogue wall. Jack tossed the coffees aside and sprinted towards the figure with a surprising turn of speed, his belly bouncing slightly with the effort. Hearing the noise of footsteps, a figure spun round and fled down the street on clattering Doc Martins. A spray can rattled on the road, followed by a tin bucket and the sudden stench of shit.

'Stop, police!' bawled Jack, lumbering more slowly now.

The dauber, who had the hood of a camouflage jacket pulled up over his head, had not slackened speed and was pelting down the street towards the waterfront. Blood was pounding in Jack's ears and he was gasping for breath, but he refused to stop though an inner voice warned of an impending heart attack. The figure sprinted over Liverpool Street, down the long hospital block and turned left into Collins Street. By this time, Jack knew he couldn't catch him. When he came panting up to the corner, his quarry had vanished. Jack was almost relieved at the sight of the empty street as he doubled up, blowing and gasping like a surfacing whale, the sweat streaming off him despite the cold, the back of his sports coat uncomfortably damp. A minute or two later, Bishop came running up, breathing almost normally and peered over the low stone parapet at the edge of the footpath.

'He's gone up the rivulet, sir,' he observed. 'Shall I go after him?'

Now Jack had got his breathing almost under control and he turned savagely on the constable, jabbing him furiously in the chest. 'Yes. I know he's got away up the fucking rivulet because you were bloody well asleep,' he hissed. 'We should have nabbed the bastard, and you were asleep, you stupid lazy sheep-shagging young dork!' For all his ranting though, Jack knew he was just as much to blame for skiving off to get coffee. More so in fact as he was Bishop's superior officer and should have sent the boy instead.

The Hobart Rivulet rises in the forest up beyond the brewery and the old stone convict women's factory in the foothills of the Mountain, becoming progressively more tamed, canalised and polluted as it approaches the city. Although it is a far cry from the horrid cloaca maxima that it was in colonial days, it isn't exactly potable water, given that its tributaries are the gutters and storm drains of the city. When it reaches the CBD the rivulet disappears abruptly underground into a winding labyrinth of tunnels. Here and there, manholes lead to ladders reaching down into the damp darkness and it can be glimpsed where it flows under Elizabeth Street, but most denizens of the city are unaware of the place. Even in daytime, the tunnel is dark and mysterious; a safe haven for those - council workmen, derelicts, ne'er-do-wells and the odd student prankster - who know its twists and turns and where to locate the big drains that pour in from the sides. After briefly returning to the surface behind the hospital, it vanishes again into another tunnel, built as a diversion from its original outlet on Sullivans Cove, to discharge its sullied waters into the estuary beyond the Cenotaph.

Jack had been up under the city three times before, once in hot pursuit of a smash and grab man who'd robbed a jeweller's, another time to follow up an anonymous tip-off about a stash of stolen goods hidden in a side tunnel. He had gone sloshing through dirty water up to his knees along the Elizabeth Street side-tunnel and found nothing but half a pushbike and some old clothes. The dirty water had ruined his charcoal-grey Italian shoes. Then it had started to rain heavily and the water level rose alarmingly. A derro had drowned in there once, trapped in a bend in the tunnel, too pissed on cheap muscat and metho to get out in time from a flash flood that hurtled down off the Mountain. The third time Jack had ventured inside it had been to investigate drunken laughter coming out of a drain at midnight. An English Literature tutor, an eccentric expatriate Malay from Penang, and a couple of dozen of his Anglo student mates were drinking ponies of beer from a nine-gallon barrel they'd set up in the darkness under the Cat and Fiddle Arcade. Jack's torch had picked up the fleeing forms of other more timorous or sober student drinkers, but the lot who stayed at the barrel were too pissed to care any more.

The hospital bulked behind them, blue night-lights glowing faintly in some of the windows. A sharp stench of sewage wafted up on a gust of air from the mouth of the tunnel; a broken pipe, Jack guessed. He'd have to report it. He wasn't about to set off into that darkness without a torch and, besides, their quarry would be far away by now. His breath regained, he turned to face his subordinate and lit a cigarette, still shaking his head at Bishop. It began to rain heavily and by the time they had reached the police car beyond the hotel, both men were soaked through. The car refused to start. There was no way they could get over to Harrington Street, where the tunnel re-emerged, to apprehend the figure in the camouflage jacket and hoodie. That is, if he hadn't taken a side tunnel.

Jack led Bishop back on foot to the station and gave him an A grade bollocking. He was useless, just fucking useless, a brain-dead drongo who was about as useful as a one-legged man in an arse-kicking contest. Was there anything at all in that ginger nut he carried on his shoulders? And if he didn't mend his useless ways, Jack would see him back on the beat in Burnie or back shagging sheep or whatever it was they did for entertainment up at Stanley. As for the police mechanic who had serviced the car, Jack intended to throttle the little bastard with a fan belt.

He sent Bishop out into the downpour to retrieve the spray can, but it was no use. The report came back later from the lab that there were no prints; the dauber had been wearing gloves. Nor did he return in the ensuing nights. Hobart was a small city and there were no reports of sightings of skinheads or other likely lads from any snouts or coppers on the beat.

At the end of the week, Booker Sahib told him that the investigation was suspended, and besides, he wanted Jack to do him a very great favour. Jack winced. He knew all about Booker's favours. This one turned out to be 'just a little temporary transfer' to Queenstown, with promotion to Acting Chief Inspector as an incentive. The favour included leaving at dawn the next day. There had been a vicious assault against a mob of 'greenie' protestors camped near a new hydro site. One young woman was on the critical list and several others had sustained broken bones and lacerations. Inspector Ron Butters, an elderly, much-respected detective, had been sent up to take charge of the investigation, but a hoon had run him off the Lyell Highway near lonely Mount Arrowsmith and Ron was now in hospital. The hoon was still at large, along with the thugs who had bashed the protestors. Boss O'Flaherty was enraged about the whole thing and wanted it sorted out by yesterday, as usual, Booker laughed.

Helen was cool about Jack's temporary transfer. Sure, he might be Acting Chief Inspector, but was she supposed to like it while he was gone? She had her work and her university studies, so she couldn't just put everything to one side and go with him up to Queenstown. Oh yeah, he said he'd come down at the weekends, but how often had she heard that story? They argued back and forth over the dining room table, picking at the coq au vin and pommes de terre maitre d'hotel she'd prepared, Jack flinging back the red wine. And what about the holiday they had planned with the Rattray-Spencers to Bruny Island for the coming weekend, she demanded. Off, like so many other bloody things, she supposed, attacking her meal savagely and quite without appetite. A big black fly had somehow got inside - what was it doing around at this time of the year anyway? - and Jack sprang up and swatted it savagely with the newspaper, smearing its insides across the window. God, it was disgusting, Helen said, crying hopeless tears, throwing down her fork and motioning him to get something to clean up the mess. Couldn't he just say no, just for once put his family ahead of the bloody job?

Jack heard Wendy's key in the front door. It rattled around for a while without success. Wrong key again. The doorbell rang and Jack almost laughed out loud with relief; saved by the bell. But these little tableaux were becoming too frequent - Jack Martin arguing with one or both of his womenfolk, one or the other walking in yet again to a zone of emotional frost or blaring emotions. Wendy kissed them both but said nothing, though the tension between them was palpable. After a while, Jack went through to the bedroom and started packing his suitcase. It was as if it were a separation, he thought, grimly stowing away his socks and shirts and, upon reflection, a couple of bottles of half-decent wine and a carton of Marlboro. Books, too, including The Fatal Shore; one of Sholokhov's novels of the Don; Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, which he was already wading through and Gitta Sereny's book on Franz Stangl, the commandant of Treblinka, Into that Darkness.

There would be plenty of time to read in the dark winter nights at Queenie and Jack relished the thought, until a stab of pain brought him back to the reality of Darcy Street. Jack and Helen were polite, but distant from each other that night, each conscious of the other's sadness, but not knowing what to do, their backs almost touching, but not quite in the loud silence of the night. Jack's mind wandered as he drifted off. Who the hell was Jean Amery?