Scrublands(46)

‘Not to you?’

‘No. Not to me.’

A small pit has opened in Martin’s stomach. He thinks of his articles in the paper, all but accusing Snouch of murder. Accusing? More like convicting. ‘Shit. Did you see the papers this morning?’

‘Yeah—we’re all over them.’

‘Except I wrote that the bodies had been discovered by an insurance inspector. Didn’t you mention something like that when we saw you out near Springfields yesterday?’

‘Not me. All I knew was that someone had found skeletons. I thought it might have been a chopper pilot, but it was definitely Snouch.’

‘Shit.’ Martin is suddenly feeling very exposed, out in the burning sun, standing on the church steps away from the shade. He glances back at the media pack; a couple of cameramen are filming him. Shit indeed. Where did he get the insurance inspector from? Mandy? How could he write something like that without double-checking its veracity? Max Fuller will be furious; Martin can hear him repeating C.P. Snow’s famous dictum even now: ‘facts are sacred’. Then he recalls the slim cop leaning on the car smoking outside the Black Dog. ‘Fuck it. You know, Robbie, I mentioned it to this detective at the motel last night, said the bodies had been uncovered by an insurance inspector, that Snouch was in custody. He didn’t correct me. Slim guy, receding hair, five o’clock shadow. A smoker. Didn’t tell me a thing, but it wouldn’t have hurt him to say I was off the mark. What’s his name?’

Robbie doesn’t reply. Instead, he’s looking at Martin with something approximating trepidation.

‘What? What did I say?’

‘You didn’t hear it from me, okay?’

‘Sure. What? You can’t tell me his name?’

‘No, I can’t. It’s against the law.’

‘What? What fucking law?’

‘He’s not a cop.’

‘Not a cop? What the fuck is he then?’ Martin recalls the way the man acted, the way he dressed, the way he spoke. All cop. And then he realises what Robbie is saying. Technically, identifying ASIO agents is against the law. ‘Holy fuck. A spook?’

‘You didn’t hear that from me.’

‘I sure didn’t.’ Christ. A spook? It made no sense. Bodies in a dam, abducted hitchhikers. Why would ASIO be interested in that? And why so quickly? The guy arrived with the Sydney cops.

Robbie interrupts his train of thought. ‘Martin?’

‘Yes?’

‘Sorry, mate, but I’m going to have to ask you to join your friends across the road. The family has requested no media in the church.’

‘Including me? I was there, remember?’

‘Yes. So was I. But I’ll be staying out here too. Standing on these fucking steps, of all places. But if I let you in, the others will all want in as well. Sorry, Martin; it’s the family’s call, not mine.’

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.