He looks at his hands, resting limp and purposeless, one on the armrest of the bench, the other on the bench itself. Not agitated, not primed, but dormant, as if they’ve been switched off by some robotic remote, placed on standby awaiting further instructions. Has that been the big mistake in his life, the essential flaw in his character—that he’s always been a loner, slow to make friends, reluctant to make allies, resistant to commitment? There is Max, of course, a mentor and true ally, and perhaps a friend as well. Max, who saw his potential, made him his go-to man, first for out-of-town stories and later for foreign assignments. But what was it that Max saw? A good journo, a good writer, but also an independent unit, someone who didn’t want or need the normal support networks of humanity, a reporter at his happiest and his best when he was separated from those he knew, who could parachute into any situation, make acquaintances and recruit sources, and then leave without qualms when the story was done. He’d been perfect for the role. Or so Max had thought, and Martin had thought so too. Now he isn’t so sure.
Finally, up on the highway, a truck thunders through, heading east from Bellington, ploughing onwards towards civilisation, not stopping, barely paying Riversend the courtesy of slowing down. Martin glimpses it as it passes through the T-junction at the top of Hay Road. Good enough; Martin stands. His head throbs and his stomach reminds him of last night’s excesses. He knows very little, but he knows he doesn’t want to be out in the open once the heat turns punitive. He thinks of water and aspirin at the general store, but it won’t be open yet. Instead, he crosses the road, making his way towards the wine saloon. Perhaps Snouch is in there, sleeping away his own hangover.
But the wine saloon is lifeless: footprints in the dust, dried wine in the bottom of chipped tumblers, an empty bottle next to a crumpled paper bag. Snouch may have left five minutes ago or on Sunday night or at any time in between; there is no way of telling.
Martin walks to the front of the saloon, to the boarded-up windows where the filtered light from the street penetrates the gloom. There’s a stool. He sits and peers out through a viewing crack, looking across the road towards the Oasis. How often did Snouch perch here, spying on his former fiancée and her daughter? What memories ran through his mind, what hopes did he harbour in his heart? Was there a frisson of excitement when at the end of the day she emerged to bring in the outside display bins? Did she ever look up, glance across the road, acknowledge her stalker in his lair? And what happened once she was back inside, the door closed for the night, the lights extinguished? Was it then that he returned to sit at one of the tables, finding comfort in his bottles and conversations with imaginary companions, explaining his motives to the dead veterans?
Martin moves away from the shuttered window and sits himself at the table where he last spoke with Snouch. Martin considers Mandalay Blonde, locked away in the closed bookstore, as inaccessible to him now as her mother ever was to Snouch. She’s beautiful, painfully so; no questioning that. She’s intelligent too, quick and quirky and independent. And young and troubled, more troubled than she deserves to be. But then again, the troubled are always young; the old are simply pathetic. Grow old and the edges come off: the mind rationalises, the heart concedes, the soul surrenders. We all grow old and frail, inside as well as out. The twists of reaction become entrenched, character traits become permanent: the resentments, the denials, the rationalisations. We learn to live with it. It’s so much more troubling when we are young and honest. Maybe Katherine Blonde was onto something when she insisted her daughter lay her demons to rest before she turned thirty.
Martin feels a pang of conscience, a creeping remorse, as he considers the woman shuttered away in the bookstore. Conceived either when her father raped her mother, or when her mother cheated on her fiancé. Growing up wearing the stigma of the rape allegation, bullied by the ignorance of locals, protected by a defiant mother conducting her own silent war. Finally escaping Riversend, but never really escaping it, frittering away her youth in Melbourne, only to be pulled back to the town by her mother’s illness. To be preyed upon by Byron Swift, with his looks and his charm and his selfish needs. Byron Swift, slipping between her sheets, between her legs, offering comfort and escape while taking exactly what he wanted. The murderer of Afghanistan, pretending to be someone he was not. Then getting shot, suiciding, and making poor Robbie Haus-Jones wear the guilt. And Mandy, impregnated and abandoned. Left all alone to raise an infant son, having nursed a dying mother. And yet she still loves Swift, despite knowing what he inflicted on her. Loves him well enough to defend him to the police a full year after he died, a pyrrhic display of loyalty if ever there was one. And then what? Him. Martin Scarsden, another thief in the night, a worthy candidate for membership of the wine saloon’s lonely company. And what has he given her? Some company, some grief. Some small parcel of companionship in the lonely nights of Riversend.
Martin picks up one of the glasses, absent-mindedly moving it to his lips before realising what he’s doing. He puts the glass down, feeling vaguely foolish. But why? There are no witnesses here; there are no ghosts. He offers himself a smile, a twisted sardonic expression, lacking humour, holding sparse compassion. Byron fucking Swift. Homicidal priest, war criminal, sprayer of sperm among the lonely women of the Riverina. Fran Landers, Mandy Blonde, God knows how many down in Bellington, God knows how many before that. A backblocks Rasputin. Mandy knows he killed the five at the church. Why go to the police with her diary, trying to clear him of the murder of the backpackers? Did she see that as a more heinous crime? That the massacre at St James was some sort of psychotic explosion, conceived and executed in the moment, whereas the abduction, probable rape and murder of the backpackers was premeditated, sadistic and evil? What was she defending: the reputation of her dead lover, her own hesitant faith in him, or the legacy bequeathed to their son, so that one day, when he learnt the truth, he might think slightly better of his father than she thought of hers? Christ. Martin looks about. For an instant, despite his aching head, he wouldn’t mind spotting an unopened bottle in the dusty gloom.
So what of her allegorical tale, that she’d fallen pregnant in a one-night stand in Melbourne? It seems obvious enough: she didn’t want to tell a journalist that she’d been the killer’s lover. She didn’t want that plastered all over the papers, not for herself and certainly not for their son. She wouldn’t want Liam growing up like herself…How had she phrased it? The progeny of scandal. But why talk at all? Because she wanted him to find out what she didn’t know: who was Byron Swift really? She’d done it deliberately, led him on, hoping he might uncover the past of the priest. What was she seeking? Some unknown vindication of Swift for impregnating her, abandoning her, shooting dead five people in cold blood, bequeathing their son shame and infamy?
Martin thinks of Walker, his discovery that the priest was a man without a past, Martin’s article in the Sunday papers, Goffing’s revelation of Flynt’s war crime. Was that it? Mandy loved Byron Swift but didn’t know who it was she loved? She wanted to know his real identity, his story, for herself and her son? Well, Martin knows now. He knows who Swift was, knows his shameful past: that Swift was a war criminal. But can he tell her? And will she listen? And what of Harley Snouch, so confident his DNA test will exonerate him and prove her mother a vindictive liar? How can Martin even broach such possibilities? She would banish him forever.