Scrublands(48)

‘Yes. I ran to the church. I told him that Craig and the others were coming to kill him. I begged him to leave. He said that he was already going; the bishop had ordered it. He said he wasn’t worried about Craig and his friends, that he could handle them. He asked me to wait for him out by Blackfellas Lagoon. We’d gone there together sometimes.’

‘You believed him?’

‘Of course. I always believed him.’

‘So you weren’t there when the shooting happened?’

‘No, I wasn’t. He made sure of that.’

Martin considers that for a moment, before changing tack. ‘You say you always believed him. Did you believe he was who he said he was?’

She doesn’t answer immediately; Martin sees only confusion on her face. ‘What? What do you mean?’

‘That he was someone else. An imposter. Maybe a former soldier.’

‘No. Never. That’s rubbish. Who told you that?’ Indignation has replaced her puzzlement.

‘How did he seem to you, Fran, that last time you saw him?’

‘Fine. He seemed fine. Calm, I would say. Calm and rather happy. Happy to be leaving.’ She sobs once more, her eyes moist, indignation superseded by distress. ‘I wasn’t happy, but he was.’



Martin walks. The heat of the day has reached its hours-long crescendo, and he’s sweating profusely, but he feels a compulsion to walk; sitting still is not an option. The sky is almost white, so leached of colour it seems metallic, with no hint of cloud. There’s a faint smell of bushfire and the wind is getting up. Another hellish day in the ‘town of death’. How long has it been since there was any rain? How long since an overcast day?

Fran’s words replay over and over in his mind. He turns them, examines them, searches them for significance. Was it possible? That a jealous husband, already enraged at being cuckolded by a priest and now informed the priest had abused his only son, decided to take revenge? And that the priest, forewarned by his lover, acted in self-defence?

No. The men may have spoken of killing him, but they weren’t armed; they’d left their guns behind. Perhaps they went to beat him up, but he shot them down without mercy. Gerry Torlini was in his car, Craig Landers was a hundred metres away, running for his life. No, self-defence was out of the question. Defending Fran Landers from potential retribution? That might explain shooting Craig Landers, but not the others. Not respectable Horrie Grosvenor, his widow Janice left uncomprehending in Bellington.

So not self-defence and not defending Fran, but that didn’t rule out Herb Walker’s call to Craig Landers as the catalyst for the shooting. He’d warned Landers and Alf Newkirk on the Friday night that the priest may have been interfering with their sons. The two men met, along with fellow members of the Bellington Anglers Club, when they went hunting on Saturday, and the men were outraged by the news. Then, on the Sunday morning, they realised Swift was in Riversend to conduct the fortnightly church service. One or more of them spoke of killing the priest, perhaps meaning it, perhaps not. Fran Landers overheard them and raced to meet her lover, believing that her husband was intent on killing him. She told Swift that Walker had talked to Craig, had made the allegation of child abuse. And so Swift shot them. It all made sense. Except it didn’t. He didn’t have to shoot anyone. He could have simply left town.

By the time Martin gets to the park, up near the bridge on the way to Deniliquin, the sweat is really pouring off him. His shirt is sopping wet and clinging. He tries the bubbler in the park, but either it’s not working or has been cut off as a water-saving measure. He climbs the stairs to the rotunda, attracted by the shade. He should be working on his story, the story of the priest with no past, but the clarity of the previous day has deserted him together with the self-confidence of the morning. Byron Swift’s connection to the Scrublands murders had seemed so certain, but today he isn’t so sure. It was Robbie’s theory, concocted in anger and despair, but there is no hard evidence. That wouldn’t necessarily prevent Martin writing the story. He had the hook: One police theory is that renegade priest Byron Swift was also involved in the killings at Springfields. A Herald investigation can now reveal that Swift was not what he seemed. He was a man without a past.

Such mystery surrounds his past that elements within the police force want to exhume his body, while ASIO has sent an experienced investigator to Riversend.

It has all the characteristics of a ripping yarn, a perfect Sunday paper read: murder, religion, spooks, sex. Christ, what a combination. So why is he hesitating? Byron Swift is dead, and the dead can’t sue. He can write whatever he likes about the priest without fear of blowback. Except maybe from Max Fuller, his editor and long-time mentor. Back when he was just a cadet and Max was chief of staff, all the cadets and cub reporters had lived in fear of him and his insistence on absolute accuracy.

Martin examines his hands. Not working hands, not honest hands. Assassin’s hands? Character assassination, not the real thing—not like Byron Swift’s hands. Swift could cut a man down at a hundred metres, a bullet through the neck, his hands steady and heart inured; Martin Scarsden could sever a man’s reputation from much further afield, from beyond the grave if necessary, hands soft and heart absent. Martin tries to imagine the hands of the young priest. Were they soft and white like his, or had they retained the callused insensitivity of a special forces soldier? Martin looks at the back of his hands, searching for evidence of keyboard atrocities.