River of Salt Page 8

  He stiffened. He’d caught a glimpse, suits moving through the crowd heading his way. Then he saw they were wearing hats, realised Nalder was with them, in uniform. Cops. The crowd was doing the Red Sea. Doreen loomed to intercept but Nalder waved her away and took the lead, reaching Blake first.

  ‘Mr Saunders. These are detectives Vernon and Apollonia from Sydney. Can we speak privately in your office.’

  The office was small. A desk and a couple of chairs with a lot of crap jammed on the perimeter. Nalder looked over to the fairer of the detectives — Vernon, Blake was guessing. Vernon put his hand out and the other detective slipped a large manila envelope in it. Vernon opened it over the desk. Glossy eight by ten black-and-whites spilled out. Blake caught images shutter speed: a motel room, blood on the walls, the bed, the floor, a naked body, a young woman’s face close-up.

  ‘You know the Ocean View Motel?’

  ‘Sure.’

  He was getting some kind of an idea now why they were here. The Ocean View was the closest of the few motels between the Shoals and the Heads. Vernon’s finger stabbed the close-up and manoeuvred it to the top of the pile.

  ‘Sometime last night or early this morning in room ten of the Ocean View, this young woman was murdered.’

  ‘Stabbed at least twenty times.’ Apollonia speaking for the first time.

  Blake’s focus eased in and out. The ferocity of the attack obvious. The cops not sparing the dead girl’s modesty, splayed, naked.

  ‘Who is she?’

  Vernon took the lead again. ‘We were hoping you might tell us. She checked in using the name Susan Smith but there’s no sign of any ID. Queensland plates on her car, we’re looking into that.’

  ‘Why would I …?’

  Apollonia tapped a close-up shot of the night table: a matchbook, Surf Shack. Blake’s head was still ringing.

  ‘We had thousands of those printed. She could have been in sometime or got it from anybody.’

  ‘You don’t recognise her?’ Nalder offering something other than beery breath.

  ‘No. My manager Doreen knows faces. She’s your best shot.’

  Vernon said, ‘There was also this,’ pointing at a roach in an ashtray. ‘I’m sure you’re familiar with marihuana.’

  Blake didn’t like where this might be heading. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘You’re American. You run a bar. You are some kind of musician from what I hear. You telling me you don’t know this “grass”?’

  ‘I’m telling you I don’t tolerate narcotics of any sort in my establishment.’

  Apollonia moved in closer. ‘That’s funny because we’ve been up and down the coast the last few hours and people have said they’ve heard about weed being used here.’

  ‘People make up stuff. Sergeant Nalder will tell you, we run a clean place.’

  Vernon was not to be snowed. ‘You’re saying to the best of your knowledge, nobody in this place smokes the stuff?’

  ‘That’s what I’m saying.’

  He was going to kill Duck.

  ‘And if we shook down everybody here, nobody would be holding grass?’

  Blake conjured a room with a radiator that didn’t work and blood on the walls. He’d been in worse places. ‘That’s right.’

  Vernon regarded him from top to bottom, looking for something wrong about him. ‘Where were you last night after your bar closed?’

  ‘He was with me.’

  Doreen was standing there. The men noticeably straightened.

  ‘This is my bar manager, Doreen Norris.’

  ‘How do you do, Miss Norris?’ Vernon scooped up the photos with practised ease. ‘You were with Mr Saunders last night?’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘How long, may I ask?’

  ‘All night. Till the early hours. That’s not against the law yet, is it?’

  Vernon appraised her with a smile on his lips. ‘Certainly not.’

  Apollonia and Nalder smirked at the joke. Vernon carefully peeled off the photo showing the victim’s face in close-up.

  ‘You recognise this girl?’

  Doreen studied the photo carefully. ‘No.’

  ‘She wasn’t in here last night?’

  ‘Not while I was here. I went out for an hour or two.’

  ‘May I ask why?’

  Vernon was no fool. Blake could almost hear gears whirring.

  ‘I was checking on the competition up the coast, see how they were doing.’ She rattled off the places she’d been.

  ‘So it’s possible, this woman came here in the time you were absent?’

  ‘Yes, it’s possible.’

  The detectives swapped looks: more work.

  Vernon turned back to Blake. ‘We’ll have to interview your patrons.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thanks for your time Mr Saunders, Miss Norris.’

  ‘Anything we can do.’

  Doreen said, ‘If you have a spare of that photo I could put it up in the club by the entrance?’

  ‘That would be of great assistance.’

  ‘You don’t recognise the girl?’

  ‘What? No!’

  He had Duck up against the wall behind the old outdoor toilet, shoving the photo under his nose.

  ‘Last night, you were out here, smoking that shit in the break.’

  ‘I might have been.’ Duck was squirming.

  ‘Did you meet this girl and give her a joint?’

  ‘Did I …? No, no, I told you … I don’t recognise her.’

  Blake tried to control himself, eased back. ‘Would you?’

  Duck was less confident. ‘Probably.’ He realised his error and scrambled to cover. ‘I mean shit, it’s dark, there’s girls … sometimes I … but not last night.’

  ‘Anybody else? Did you give that stuff to anybody else?’

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘Yes, last night. Or any night.’

  ‘Not last night.’ He flinched at Blake’s gaze. ‘Look, sometimes, a guy or a girl, I might let them have a puff.’

  ‘Did you sell any to anybody?’

  ‘No. Man, come on, you’re grilling me like a fucking cop. Next thing you’ll bring out the phone book.’

  ‘The girl was murdered. Like something out of Psycho.’

  ‘Yeah well, there was a matchbook there too, that mean you did it?’

  ‘They could close us down. You get that?’ He tapped Duck’s head. ‘I don’t want you ever, ever bringing that stuff in here again.’

  ‘Okay, I swear. Scout’s honour. Listen, it’s not like I’m the only person in the state who smokes weed. There’s loads of it. You know that.’

  ‘And you never saw the dead girl here last night? Or a car with Queensland plates?’

  ‘No. I was judging the contest. I came out in our break for a quick puff. I spoke to a young guy, I didn’t offer him anything … that’s it.’

  Blake stepped back, Duck pulled out a cigarette.

  ‘I love you, man. I wouldn’t put you in the shit. And I swear, no weed near here ever again.’

  ‘What did Duck say?’

  They were in his office, Doreen handing him calico bags of the night’s takings. There was just the two of them. He could hear Andy cleaning and straightening the main room but it was past two and the bar long closed.

  ‘Said he didn’t recognise her. Admitted he was smoking weed last night but never gave any to anybody else. You didn’t have to do that, you know … cover for me.’

  ‘You saying you had somebody else could alibi you?’

  Sometimes when she looked through those long eyelashes he thought his heart might thaw out from where it had been frozen so long.

  ‘No. But I didn’t do it, so …’

  ‘So you were clear?’ She invested it with disbelief. ‘I missed the intro but it seemed like Vernon was interested in you. I thought it best to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Thank you, anyway, called for or not,’ he said. ‘You’re right
. I don’t need some cop giving me grief. Nobody recognised her?’

  ‘None of the staff. I don’t know about anybody else. There weren’t many from last night in tonight.’

  That was true. The dance comp had brought in underagers.

  He said, ‘Nalder told me they would likely be back tomorrow asking around town.’

  ‘She could have got the matchbook from anywhere.’

  He liked Doreen trying to reassure him.

  ‘Yeah.’ But what he didn’t say aloud was what he reckoned she was thinking too: the girl may not have been a customer here, but maybe her killer had. ‘I can follow you home?’

  Doreen brushed that off. ‘I’m alright. Once they identify her, they’ll find it’s her husband or boyfriend. Queensland number plates on her car. She was probably heading south, picked up the matches in the Heads. I left a bunch up there last week.’

  She swayed out of the office, pulled the door to. Though he had a safe in here, he decided he would take the money home with him. He hadn’t forgotten Harry and Steve. More vermin threatening his paradise. And now Nalder would be even less likely to change his mind and intervene.

  Doreen wasn’t being quite as noble as he thought. She had been on the verge of telling him that she knew he was alone because she’d sat across the way and watched him like she did regularly. Thought maybe she could confess it in one shocking rock-through-a-window moment. But didn’t. What was he going to think — she was some desperate woman stalking him? The Surf Shack matchbook didn’t mean anything, really. They’d had hundreds printed and dropped here and there up the coast. It could have even been left by some previous guest. These motels were cleaned about the same level as a bus. She’d often found somebody’s shampoo in a bathroom cabinet or a magazine under a couch. Still, even though she was sure the murderer would prove to be some man who knew the woman, she did cast around the carpark when she reached her car. That wasn’t something she did normally, too busy thinking about staff and shifts and next week’s advertising. She climbed into the car. She was looking forward to getting back in her little place, kicking off her shoes. Lately she’d been thinking she had to have that television. Maybe with a TV she wouldn’t feel the need to go sit outside Blake’s? She already had money saved and they had some smaller models she could buy. No way was she doing hire-purchase. As she pulled out of the carpark, she was contemplating whether the young woman who had been killed up there in the Ocean View had left hire-purchase agreements. She guessed she probably had.

  By the time the detectives left Nalder, it was a little after one-thirty in the morning. He’d played the assiduous local cop kissing their arse, how he’d have loved to have been a detective but wasn’t smart enough, blah, blah. They lapped it up. He’d driven them around town and shown them the likely places where they might get a witness who recognised the dead girl, if she had indeed passed through.

  He also gave them the run-down on a half-dozen locals with some kind of form for violence and sex crimes.

  ‘What about Norman Bates?’ The Italian cop had asked.

  ‘Who? I don’t think he’s on our files.’

  The two of them had started laughing then. At him.

  Trying to quit the hysterics, Apollonia had said, ‘You know from Psycho, the motel guy in the movie. Janet Leigh gets stabbed to death in the shower.’

  Nalder had never heard of the movie. He and Edith almost never went to the movies. Earlier this year they’d gone up to the Heads to The Music Man. If they did go to a movie, it wouldn’t be one about a woman getting hacked to death. He felt small, a country bumpkin. They were thorough. They went to the station and made notes and skimmed files. They were staying in Opal, halfway between the Heads and the Ocean View Motel, and said they would canvass that area first. The only thing pointing them here had been that damn matchbook. And the narcotic. It made him look bad, people saying you saw that stuff at the Surf Shack. Saunders would need a very serious talking-to. In private, the cops had admitted that they’d heard the same about other places up near the Heads, and in the river towns inland, so it wasn’t actually a black mark against him per se, but when you put it with the matches it didn’t look good.

  The house was cool when he entered. Edith always left the windows open even though he’d told her not to when he wasn’t around. All night he’d been busting to ring Rob Parker and see if he had news for his nomination. It was too late now. But maybe he had called here? He clicked on the kitchen light, saw the dark blur of a moving cockroach making for a corner. His feet hurt. He walked lightly on the lino so as not to wake Edith. There on the little pad beside the phone under the Goodbye Cruel World cartoon of the bloke about to flush himself down the dunny was a message written in biro. He needed his glasses to read it properly.

  ‘Rob Parker called. Sorry, no. Call him tomorrow.’

  In that instant he felt insubstantial, made of straw or less, chaff, like he could dissipate in the night air, like there was no centre of him anymore, like Leslie Nalder had ceased to exist, may never have existed, was just a volume of space that had split asunder without leaving a mark of his existence on the world.

  He felt ashamed.

  Quietly he opened the fridge and took out the half-consumed bottle of beer. Not flat yet. He carefully removed one of the beer glasses with the frosting around the outside and sat down at the kitchen table, poured a beer and raised it to his lips. He endured the bitter liquid rolling over his tongue, swallowed it. His old man had worked for the railways. Tough as nails. Nalder sensed his judgement: ‘That’ll teach you for trying to muscle into the dress circle. They’ve wiped you away like a stain.’

  He saw the scene as a camera would: kitchen chair pulled at a laminex table, a half-full glass of beer, and above, looking down over the tableau, an ironic poster of a man about to flush himself down the toilet … but no human presence, no subject, so that it seems a work of still life, unless peering very, very closely you detect … There! A variation in the light as if something otherwise invisible, some pulse, some near undetectable half-life, might actually exist.

  Here’s to you, Les.

  5. Cockeyed Optimist

  The last thirty-six hours had been a roller-coaster, like the big one she and Dad had gone on when she was thirteen — didn’t that seem ancient history — up the coast. Same holiday they went to the marine-life place and she got picked out of the crowd to feed the seal. She was wearing a polka dot dress and thought she was the ant’s pants but now she cringed at the memory. Braces too. God, polka dots and braces. Yesterday, Friday, had been an absolute misery. The phone had not rung despite her willing it. She had closed her eyes and asked God to help with this one. The phone had not rung.

  She picked it up and listened to confirm the dial tone was there. It was. It was after ten-thirty in the morning before it jangled. She’d rushed to the phone, breathless, but it was only Jean Rossiter after her mum’s recipe for tuna mornay. She’d battled on through the morning listening to the radio but by lunchtime she was down the well. She couldn’t eat, even having had no breakfast, her appetite just wasn’t there. Bumps, the family’s white Persian cat, seemed to scold her for being so stupid. Kitty could almost hear her voice: ‘As if Todd Henley is going to dump Brenda for you.’ She rode her bike around the streets and dropped in on her friend Jenny who was experimenting with a facial mud pack. Complete disaster. She couldn’t laugh. The night was a funeral procession. Then, this morning, she didn’t even run for the phone, resigned. Her mum answered and put on the voice she did when people she didn’t know very well called: like an ABC announcer.

  ‘It’s Todd Henley for you.’

  Her mum couldn’t hide her own excitement. It wasn’t like Kitty hadn’t had dates — she’d been out to the movies a few times with a couple of boys her own age but this was different. Todd Henley went to university. His father was some businessman involved in chemicals for farming or something.

  Kitty’d tried to sound relaxed but her voice was all constri
cted and high when she greeted him.

  And then right in, no messing around, he said, ‘I was wondering if you would be available tonight to go to the drive-in?’

  They were his exact words. ‘Available’, like she might already be taken.

  ‘I would love that, Todd.’

  Her mother was hovering. They talked only for a short time. Todd said he was helping out at his dad’s work for the holidays. Saying she would be ready at a quarter to seven as requested and after explaining where she lived, she finally relinquished the phone. Todd had his own car. She had never, ever been out with a boy who owned his own car. She was ready to hitch a ride on cloud nine but first there was her mum to deal with on cloud one.

  ‘The drive-in?’

  In her mum’s brain, the drive-in equated to a Roman orgy. Under normal circumstances it would have been a complete no-no. She’d already been told many times no drive-in until she was seventeen. But these were not normal circumstances. She had pleaded: Todd goes to university. You know the family. Todd’s father is successful. Her mother said she would talk to her father.

  That meant the deal was sealed. Her dad would do whatever her mum wanted him to do. Cloud nine was here.

  She had a bath, shaved her legs singing ‘A Cockeyed Optimist’ and ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ at the top of her voice. Her dad’s so-called safety razor was lethal. One small nick, that was all. Underarm was hazardous but she got through it. She’d narrowed her outfit choice to five possibles. She brushed her teeth twice while she debated what to wear. No way would she eat before the date. Make-up was going to be an entirely different challenge. On stage the other night, Doreen had helped her with some proper stage make-up that made her eyes huge so the crowd could read her expressions. But this was going to be too close and … intimate for that.

  And that’s how it was heading as late as three o’clock, everything on track, a few slight concerns over mascara. Then her mum came back from shopping in town and went to the phone and rang every acquaintance she knew as she told with ghastly pleasure of her encounter with real police detectives who were asking everybody if they recognised a young woman who had been stabbed to death in the Ocean View Motel.