Only Killers and Thieves(98)

“I suppose you consider my terms unfair? Forcing you to leave?”

“I was planning on it anyway.”

“Without your brother?”

He sniffed. “Either way.”

“And yet you are still angry with me? You hold me to blame?”

“For what?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you feel?”

“I don’t feel nothing about you at all.”

There was hesitation before Noone spoke again: “Of course, it’s only natural to be angry when you’ve been duped. Consider, though, that since those who have wronged you will both soon be dead, and I have allowed you and your brother to live, it’s really a rather satisfactory outcome from your point of view. About the best you could have hoped for, I would say. You should be pleased. There are plenty of positives to be found.”

“What fucking positives?”

“Come now, Tommy. You must broaden your mind. You have got away with murder tonight. There aren’t many men can say the same.”

“You can. You lot do it all the bloody time.”

“Ah, but that is different. We do not kill anyone: we disperse.”

“Doesn’t matter what you call it.”

“Of course it does! That is all these things ever come down to, is it not, a legal sleight of hand? What is murder? How is it defined? Who gets to decide? Every law, every custom, every rule by which we live is made up by someone, conjured from thin air, then written down and by some sort of magic enacted into law. It is so malleable, Tommy. It is so unfair. The biggest myth in the world is that the law applies equally to all men—well, no, actually the biggest myth in the world is that God exists, but then even that amounts to the same thing: a made-up story written down and taken as His holy law. It is all the same parlor trick. There is no such thing as right and wrong. The only question is the individual’s willingness to act. The rest is veneer, formality, perception . . . words.”

“Course there’s a difference between right and wrong.”

“I disagree.”

“You would.”

“I assure you I am not alone.”

“So you don’t feel nothing about the things you’ve done?”

“Guilt, regret, conscience—they’re redundant emotions, unnecessary after the fact. No, the decision must be taken beforehand: there is always an alternative path. We tell ourselves that we have no choice, when the very opposite is true: there is always another choice. Consider your own situation. You do not regret killing John, I assume, because you believe it was warranted, yet the dispersal of the Kurrong weighs heavily, I can tell. What is the difference? That you now know the Kurrong were not responsible for your family’s murder, but back then you thought they were? Really? I don’t believe there weren’t doubts, or that at some point before we rode in there you didn’t realize Joseph wasn’t our only aim. Yet you participated. You still chose to—”

“You said if I didn’t you’d burn me against a tree.”

“So there you have it. You were faced with a choice and you acted. There is too much hand-wringing in the world these days, when the truth is, no one ever really feels remorse. At night in their beds or on their knees to pray, they chunter about regret and feel at peace. It is a charade. If they truly regretted something—if you were truly remorseful about what you’ve done, you would fall to your knees and ask to be shot. Or else you’d ride into town and confess and insist on being hanged. But you won’t. No one ever does.”

“I told MacIntyre what happened. He said we’d done nothing wrong.”

“Well, quite. Because the law is on our side. What we did to the Kurrong was necessary, Tommy, and it’s happening all over this land. In Tasmania the natives have all but disappeared. The guilt is collective, the responsibility shared. In a hundred years no one will even remember what happened here and certainly no one will care. History is forgetting. Afterward we write the account, the account becomes truth, and we tell ourselves it has always been this way, that others were responsible, that there was nothing we could have done.”

“They’re still dead,” Tommy said. “All those people. That doesn’t change.”

Noone sighed. “As will you be one day, Tommy. As will I. So ask yourself, really, what fucking difference does any of this make?”

The camp emerged from the darkness. A ramshackle warren of barns and slab huts, lit by a low fire and shrouded in thin smoke. Shadows of men crossing back and forth, the shouting and the laughter, the quarrels and the cheers. Locke was in there somewhere. Chewing, spitting, arguing, eating his final meal.

They came to where the track forked, and paused.

“What’ll you do to him?” Tommy asked. “Locke—what’ll you do?”

Noone looked puzzled. “Kill him—what else?”

“How, I mean? How’ll you do it?”

“I don’t know. I suppose that depends on him.”

“You won’t try and arrest him?”

“No, Tommy. I won’t. What would be the use?”

Tommy peered between the buildings, into the camp. Noone said, “If you want, you can come with me. I can’t allow you a weapon but you’re welcome to watch. I expect it will give us both some satisfaction. A mutual parting gift.”