Scrublands(117)

THE PHONE WAKES HIM, THE DISCORDANT JANGLE OF THE BLACK DOG’S OUTDATED technology. His sleep has been deep, but not long. Yet the phone won’t let him slumber; it won’t let him be. It persists. He lets it ring out once, only for it to start again a moment later. He lifts the receiver, if just to stop it ringing. ‘Martin Scarsden.’

‘Martin, Wellington Smith. How are you? Trust I didn’t wake you.’

‘No. Of course not.’ He glances at his watch. Six forty-five? What sort of newspaperman is Wellington Smith?

‘Martin, I’ve been thinking. This story you’ve got. It’s massive. Fucking huge. I want the magazine piece, the first bite, but I want a book as well. This is going to make your career. You, mate, are going to be a legend.’

‘Right,’ says Martin, unsure what to say. Not that he needs to say anything; for a full ten minutes Smith speaks nonstop, promising Martin a lot of money and a lot of everything else as well: recognition, salvation, awards, status, fame, television rights and groupies. Everything. Smith talks so quickly, so effusively, that he doesn’t appear to draw a breath, like a didgeridoo player on repeat. Finally Smith pauses long enough for Martin to thank him and end the call. He should be enthusiastic, he knows he should; he should be grateful, he just doesn’t feel it.

He tries to go back to sleep but it’s no longer possible. Now he’s awake and aware, he can smell himself; he stinks of smoke and sweat. Reluctantly he abandons his bed for the shower. The water pressure seems even weaker than usual, as if fighting the fire has all but depleted the water supply. Who knows? Maybe it has.

Leaving the motel, he enters a wounded town. Hay Road is a mess. The tanker stands guard across from the burnt-out shell of the Commercial Hotel, splintered pieces of verandah littering the street. A couple of locals, belatedly dressed in high-vis overalls, stand guard by the side of the truck. They offer a mumbled ‘g’day’ as he surveys the damage. Errol and the crew have done their job well; the damage has been restricted to the hotel. The building’s bottom half is still standing, largely intact, although the smoke and water damage will have ruined it. The second storey is another matter. At the corner overlooking the intersection, the roof has collapsed and the verandah gone, part of the outer wall crumbling in. The windows are blackened sockets. There is little left of Avery Foster’s apartment; the windows are blown out, the verandah is a remnant, only a small section of the roof hangs from the end wall. Smoke is still swirling upwards, grey tendrils from a thousand coals, but not enough to justify further dousing. The hotel is beyond saving; it requires demolition.

The general store is closed. Of course it’s closed. After the arrest of Jamie Landers, will it ever reopen? Martin walks back towards the T-junction. There’s no sign of life at the Oasis Bookstore and Cafe, none at the wine saloon, none anywhere else. It’s Thursday, but it’s still too early for Riversend’s surviving stores to open. At least the service station on the highway is trading, offering newspapers and an approximation of coffee: Nescafé self-serve, the granules rattling as Martin spoons them into a white foam cup, filling it with boiling water from an urn, milk from a two-litre container. It tastes the same way he feels: ordinary.

He sits on a white plastic chair at a white plastic table, cheap outdoor furniture brought inside for the summer. Inevitably Riversend is on the front page again: Carrie O’Brien’s long-lens photo of Jamie Landers at the crime scene in the Scrublands. BLUE-EYED PSYCHOPATH says the headline. Martin reads D’Arcy’s stories dispassionately, the news report supplying the facts, the colour piece supplying the emotion. D’Arcy does them both well, but it all seems like a very long time ago, not yesterday afternoon. Riversend has experienced new dramas since then; new questions have emerged. Martin looks up from the papers, as if trying to spot an answer lurking in the petrol station.

Instead, through the door barges Doug Thunkleton. ‘Hi, Martin. Fancy seeing you here. How are you?’

‘Oh, you know. Disgraced.’

‘Huh?’

‘Never mind.’

‘Oh, right. I get it. Listen, Martin, about that—I want to apologise. You know, what happened in Bellington. It wasn’t my angle; the chief of staff pushed it.’

‘Right.’

‘Angie Hester. Sounds like you know her.’

Angie? An image of a dark-eyed woman comes to Martin, the memory of a brief assignation, but nothing more.

‘Don’t know what you did, but she sure has it in for you. The news director is apoplectic. Reckons it will take forever for our reputation to recover. He’s sacked her.’

Martin feels a barb of guilt: guilt for whatever it was he’d done to the woman, and guilt for not remembering what it was. ‘What about you?’ he asks Thunkleton.

‘I went along with it, so I have to wear some of the grief. But I’ll survive. I just wanted to say sorry.’

There’s contrition in Thunkleton’s manner and Martin finds himself offering solidarity of a sort. ‘I saw the suicide blonde story. You get shit-canned by your editors?’

‘Did I what. Bunch of fucking desk jockeys. Not that I didn’t deserve it. Some of it. But I won’t be getting a pay rise this year, put it that way.’

The two men sit in silence; Martin suspects it’s an unusual experience for Thunkleton. He’s right; the television reporter stands up, nods his apologies again and leaves.