The interview with the police had started out curt and confrontational, the detectives struggling to assimilate events, scared of being caught out again. ‘What the fuck just happened?’ Montifore demanded, his face betraying confusion and panic, hope and anger. They’d already heard Robbie’s version, how the constable had arrived on the scene to find Mandy preparing to eviscerate Jamie Landers. And so Martin recounted, emotions suppressed, a reliable and seasoned witness, how he and Mandy had gone to collect her son Liam from Frances Landers, how they had then returned to Mandy’s place and the bookstore looking for Liam and Jamie Landers, how he had seen the Mr Puss poster and made the intuitive leap to the hotel.
That was when it turned nasty; the police demanding to know why Martin hadn’t told them about finding the dead cat. Their intention was clear: they wanted it stated, on the record, that they had been denied vital evidence, that no one could accuse them of overlooking any clue or lead or tip, however obscure, that might have forewarned them of the potential atrocity unfolding a hundred metres from their Riversend headquarters. Martin recognised what was happening and for a moment, the shortest of moments, temptation cast its lure his way: he could lie, say he had told Herb Walker, as he had indeed intended to do. The blame would fall on the dead policeman; Martin would be absolved. But the moment passed, temptation withering. Walker’s legacy was already burdened with enough opprobrium and Martin couldn’t bring himself to care about his own: the child was safe, the madman was in custody, Mandy had been spared every mother’s worst fear. And so he cooperated, accepting culpability, stating he’d intended to tell the police about the tortured cat but had been overtaken by events. His mistake, he confided in them, was that he’d become obsessed with the events of a year before, the shooting at St James, the mystery of Byron Swift and, later, the abduction and murder of the young Germans. Had it not been the same with the police? It hadn’t occurred to him that events were still unfolding, that it wasn’t the past they needed to worry about but the present.
After that, once he’d exonerated the police, the interrogation became an interview. The questions were no longer accusatory but simply seeking information. He continued his dispassionate narrative, recounting the chain of events at the hotel from the time he and Mandy had arrived and seen the stroller to the moment Robbie Haus-Jones had rushed in the door and arrested Jamie Landers. Martin found he could recall every moment, every word, with startling clarity: the position of the stroller outside the pub, the painting of the fox hunt, the blood on Jamie Landers’ dagger. He took them through it, second by second, like a film being played frame by frame. The detectives stopped interjecting, listening. Finally, when he had finished, the silence continued uninterrupted until, eventually, Montifore began to take him back and forth through his evidence.
‘From his words and from his gestures, from what you saw, do you have any doubts at all that Jamie Landers was solely responsible for the abduction and captivity of Liam Blonde?’
‘No doubts whatsoever.’
‘And he had already injured the infant?’
‘Yes. There was blood on the boy and blood on the knife.’
‘And he intended killing the boy?’
‘Without doubt. He invited me to watch, in his words, as the lights went out.’
‘And he then intended killing you?’
‘Without doubt. He moved towards me, brandishing the knife, saying I would last longer than the child.’
‘By which you believed he meant…?’
‘That he intended to torture and kill me.’
‘Like he had done to the two murdered backpackers?’
‘Sorry. There was no reference to them, just the suggestion that I would live longer than the child.’
‘Do you believe that, through her actions, Mandalay Blonde may have saved you and her son from injury or death? That the minor wound she inflicted on Jamie Landers was justified?’
‘Yes, I do. Without a single doubt.’
The meeting had grown more collegiate, Martin more or less a member of the team, invited to assist in locking down the chain of events. It grew even more collegiate when Robbie Haus-Jones interrupted: Landers wanted to make a full confession to the murders of the two backpackers. He wanted to tell it all. Martin observed Montifore’s face, the pressure easing out of it, the grin, starting small and contained before spreading out until it covered his face from ear to ear as Robbie conveyed what Landers had already told him. The teenager had lured the backpackers into a car together with his friend Allen Newkirk. They’d tortured them, raped them and then killed them. And then Newkirk had died, his comrade in crime, thrown from the ute out on the highway to Bellington. Landers said he had felt scared and abandoned, all alone. He’d had enough. He knew he was sick in the head. He wanted to die; he wanted to join his mate. But he had wanted to better the priest, to do something truly abhorrent. And the opportunity had presented itself to him, as if by fate. He claimed he hadn’t sought out Liam Blonde; the child had been delivered to him. He’d killed a cat, shot some cows out in the Scrublands, some kind of pagan tribute to his dead friend and the fun they’d had with the German girls. Taking Liam had seemed preordained and perfect.
With grim objectivity, Martin then recognised a sense of euphoria among the police. The murder case captivating the nation, the one that had seemed so intractable just that morning, the one that had funnelled pressure down onto Montifore’s team—starting from the premier, flowing down through the police commissioner and the head of homicide—that case had been blown right open. They had the killer, the investigation was now all about tying up loose ends and preparing a brief.
‘It still doesn’t explain why Byron Swift went on his rampage,’ Martin interposed.
Montifore looked at him sadly, shaking his head. ‘True. But who gives a shit? That’s not why we’re here.’
‘What about Mandy Blonde? Can I see her?’
‘We’ll be releasing her soon enough. She’s with her son and the doctor. She’ll be free to go once the kid is patched up.’
‘What about the diary and perverting the course of justice?’
‘Forget it. Water under the bridge, mate. Landers and Newkirk killed the backpackers, not Byron Swift. It’s all water under the bridge.’
Martin is still waiting by the reception counter of the Riversend police station for Mandy Blonde to be released. His mind is not entirely his own; unbidden, it keeps replaying incidents from earlier in the day: the confrontation upstairs at the pub, with Jamie Landers gloating and mad one moment, terrified and pleading the next; Mandy and himself searching for Liam and Jamie, oblivious to what was unfolding upstairs in the Commercial Hotel; driving across the endless plain to stand outside the Bellington police station, the site of his on-air execution. It’s all mixed up, all shuffled together, his mind throwing up scenes at random, as if independently trying to make sense of the day. He doesn’t understand why he’s feeling so disorientated; nothing truly terrible has happened, the boy is safe, the murderer in custody.