Martin feels peeved, but realises that Robbie is merely the messenger. ‘Fair enough. And thanks for letting me know about the spooks. I’ll keep that under my hat for now.’
He walks back towards his admiring colleagues, head down, as if pondering serious new information, when all he’s really doing is avoiding eye contact. They won’t be admiring him for much longer, not once they cotton on to the fact that he might have falsely accused an innocent man. That studio-bound pedant on Media Watch, with his team of acolytes, will be all over him like a rash. And his colleagues certainly won’t be admiring him if Snouch starts spraying around defamation writs; most of them have been repeating his allegations as fact. But as he stands in the shade of the trees and starts to think it through, it doesn’t make sense to him. It’s been a long time since he did his stint on police rounds, but he remembers enough about police methodology to recall that coppers invariably target the most obvious suspects, and for good reason: they’re usually proven right. If a woman turns up beaten to death, then the husband or boyfriend is immediately a suspect. The cops will typically lock them up for as long as legally permissible, apply maximum pressure, extract as much information as possible, maybe even a confession, before alibis can be confected. So what was going on? Here, they have a man who, judging by his prison tattoos, has done time in jail, an alleged rapist no less, reporting bodies in his dam—bodies that he knows are likely to be found now that the fires have denuded the place and he’s waiting for insurance assessors. Surely he must be the primary suspect. So why were they letting him go? The hole in Martin’s stomach grows a little bigger. There’s stuff happening here and he has no idea what it is. Or perhaps Robbie has simply got it wrong; maybe they haven’t arrested Snouch yet, but it won’t be long. ‘Helping police with their inquiries’ was the usual phrase. Why arrest him and set the habeas corpus clock ticking if he’s helping anyway? Martin calms down a little.
More people are gathering outside the church now, and the cameramen and photographers are concentrating on their work, the clatter of camera shutters chattering away like a coded conversation. Herb Walker is there, having a quiet word with Robbie off to one side. Fran Landers arrives, accompanied by Jamie. The boy stares at the ground, looking as if this is the last place in the world he wants to be. Mandy arrives with Liam in a stroller, ignoring the media completely, and Robbie helps her up the stairs and into the church.
Martin looks about to see if he can spot Carrie; instead a movement catches his eye. Standing behind the media, up on the ridge of the levee bank, wearing a red shirt, is the boy Martin met on the church steps on his first full day in Riversend. What was his name? Luke? The boy is holding a long stick, like a walking stick, and as Martin watches, he lifts it to his shoulder like a gun and points it at Martin. He lowers it a little, mouths the word ‘pow’, and then he’s off, scrambling down the other side of the levee bank, leaving Martin rooted to the spot, breath frozen in the simmering heat of the day.
After the funeral, Martin tries the Oasis first, but there is no chance of a quiet word with Mandy; the place is crawling with journalists. She has wheeled her coffee machine out on a trolley and positioned it next to the shop counter, rigging it up with a jerry can of water. But the boom in business has not improved her mood; she scowls as she serves him a takeaway coffee. Martin guesses she’s read his stories—or learnt of them from the swarming reporters—his stories condemning Swift and condemning Snouch. Her manner is distant, almost formal; he decides now isn’t the time to broach the subject with her.
He pays for his coffee and makes his way down Hay Road, crossing Somerset, past the World War I digger on his plinth and the locked doors of the Commercial Hotel. If only the pub had held on for another six months; it wasn’t just coffee that journalists put away by the bucketload.
At the general store, Fran is back behind the counter, still wearing her church finery. Jamie is helping, scowling at the mix of locals and media browsing among the aisles as he does so.
‘Hello, Mr Scarsden,’ says Fran. ‘I was wondering when you’d be back. You’ve been selling a lot of papers.’ Today there are no smiles, no suggestion of flirtation.
‘So I see,’ says Martin, regarding the vacant space where the papers usually sat in small piles. ‘You’re not happy about that?’
‘Happy to sell papers, not so happy with you implicating Byron in the deaths of those girls.’
‘Fran. Is there somewhere we can talk? In private?’
The storekeeper considers the throng of customers. ‘I guess so.’ She turns to her son. ‘Jamie, can you mind things for a moment while I talk to Mr Scarsden out the back?’
Jamie grunts his assent and Fran leads Martin past the customers and through a door at the back of the store. She turns on the lights; fluorescent tubes hanging in banks from the ceiling flicker to life, casting a hard-edged light. The room is nothing like Mandy’s home at the back of the Oasis; this is one big space, windowless and full of shelving, much of it empty, with cardboard boxes containing various products here and there. There are spiderwebs on the higher shelves, but otherwise the storeroom is well kept. In one corner, to the left of the door, there’s a desk with a computer monitor that looks a decade out of date. Fran brushes at the seat behind the desk with her hand, protective of her church clothes, and sits. Martin takes the seat on the other side of the desk.
He doesn’t bother with niceties, but picks up the conversation where they’d paused it at the counter. ‘You don’t think Byron was involved in the death of the girls in the dam?’
‘No. Do you have any proof? Do the police?’
‘Not yet. But they’re investigating.’
Fran glowers at him. He decides there’s little to be gained in arguing the toss: neither of them can know for sure whether Swift was involved and he risks angering her unnecessarily. He spreads his hands, a conciliatory gesture.
‘Fran, I need your help. I’ve been thinking over the day of the shooting. There are things that bother me, now that I know about you and Byron.’
‘I see.’
‘He wasn’t a regular churchgoer, your husband, was he?’
The question seems to drain the indignation from her. Instead her voice is subdued, her eyes not meeting his as she answers. ‘No.’
‘Did he know about you and Byron?’
Fran remains still, eyes fixed on the blank computer monitor. Finally, a nod of affirmation.
‘Did you warn Byron that Craig was going to the church?’
Another nod.
‘What did you fear Craig was going to do?’
She turns to Martin, eyes pleading.
‘Tell me, Fran.’
A small sob escapes her, a fragile thing, fleeting. ‘I overheard them. Out by our garage. Craig and his friends. The ones Byron shot. They said they were going to kill him. In horrible ways. I knew they meant it.’
‘What did they say?’
‘Craig said he was going to ram his shotgun up his arse and give him both barrels.’
‘Why, Fran? Why kill him? Why then?’
‘I don’t know. I just heard them saying that’s what they were going to do.’
Martin leans back, considers what she’s telling him and finds himself not believing her. But why would she mislead him? He decides to be direct. ‘I’ve been told, by a reliable source, that on the Friday night before the shooting the police warned Craig that Swift was molesting children. Are you saying Craig didn’t mention that to you?’
‘I’ve already told you: it wasn’t true, I didn’t believe it.’
‘But Craig told you?’
‘Yes, I knew.’
‘So you warned him? Warned Byron?’
‘Yes. I ran to the church. I told him that Craig and the others were coming to kill him. I begged him to leave. He said that he was already going; the bishop had ordered it. He said he wasn’t worried about Craig and his friends, that he could handle them. He asked me to wait for him out by Blackfellas Lagoon. We’d gone there together sometimes.’