Peter Corris: Aftershock

The name had been spoken and it seemed to break some kind of knot in Withers. He tapped the constable on the shoulder, botted a cigarette from him and lit up. ‘Jesus, that’s better. Turn on the radio, son, and keep yourself amused. Me and Mr Hardy are talking old farts’ stuff back here.’

The radio came on and Withers spoke quickly and urgently. He was worried, he said, about Glen. If things got sticky between the police and Sergei Costi it was more than likely that Costi would go down. He would understand that as well as anyone. ‘I don’t want Glen around if it gets to that point. If she’s with the Costi girl and everything blows up, who knows how it might all sort out? I’m going out on a limb here, Hardy, talking to you like this.’

‘I know,’ I said.

‘You care about Glen?’

I nodded. ‘But I still don’t know where you’re pointing.’

Withers shrugged, took a last deep drag on the cigarette and threw the butt out the window. ‘Neither do I. But I wanted to put you in the picture. With a bit of luck, everything’ll sort out okay. If it gets rough, I’m looking after Glen first and myself second. Got it?’

I didn’t reply. We zoomed through Kahiba and the constable threw the car into the last roundabout and roared up through Whitebridge towards Dudley.

‘Turn the fuckin’ radio off and slow down,’ Withers snarled.

There was a fair-sized crowd assembled outside 88 Ocean Street-gawkers, police forensic men, Jeff, the renovator and his mate who’d been stopped in their tracks. Withers pushed through and I followed him down the side path to the back of the house. The activity and the number of people around made the place seem smaller and meaner. The backyard was stacked with galvanised iron, floorboards, masonite and other materials. The big bath, looking like a beached whale, sat on its claw legs in the middle of a patch of sunlight. I was surprised that they hadn’t found a reason to chop down the trees.

Withers nodded to a few of the men and got a cigarette from one of them. ‘What the fuck’s this?’ he said, pointing at a portable power unit that had been wheeled into place. Cigarettes seemed to increase his energy but not improve his humour.

A man, whose white overall couldn’t conceal that he was a cop, held a light to Withers’ cigarette. ‘The old lady next door’s been useful, Inspector. She reckons there’s a well under this concrete.’ With his boot he scuffed the slab that covered the space between the house and the bathroom. ‘Her place has one and she says all these houses did in the old days. A section of the slab looks fairly new’

‘So it does,’ Withers said. All right. Get on with it.’

It was hot in the backyard, even under the trees, and the hammering and battering made it feel even hotter. Someone went off for sandwiches and soft drinks but I was a civilian, even if I had been co-opted, and I brought back a couple of cans of light beer. They were trying to work around the new section of slab in order to lever it out but it was thick and had some reinforcing rods through it. The work was interrupted by frequent conferences between the jackhammer operators and Jeff. The backyard filled with gritty dust that settled on the grass, making it grey and mottled. Not a cheerful place to begin with, 88 Ocean Street was getting more depressing by the minute.

Molly from next door hung over the fence taking in every detail of the scene. She recognised me and beckoned me across.

‘I knew he was a wrong ‘un,’ she said.

‘How come?’

‘Never even had a washing machine,’ she said, “washed his clothes in the bath and hung them on the line there.’ She pointed to a slack length of clothes line strung between two trees at the back of the block. ‘Always washing his clothes, he was. And never bought a washing machine.’

‘Was he friendly, Molly? Did you chat much?’

‘Nah. Never gave me the time of day. Wouldn’t have talked to him for more than a minute or two a couple of times in the whole three or four years he was there.’

‘What did he talk about, when he did talk?’

‘Are you with the police? I seen you here with Horrie Jacobs the other day.’

‘I’m helping the police. Can you remember what Mr Bach talked about?’

She scratched her thin grey hair and readjusted her spectacles on her nose. Her eyes were still very blue for an elderly person and despite the specs I had the feeling they wouldn’t have missed much. Her hearing was sound too, because she could follow what I was saying over all the racket just a few metres away. ‘Didn’t say much. I remember he was very interested in the lagoon. I told him where it was and how to get there.’

‘The lagoon?’

She jerked her thumb over her shoulder, indicating the direction of the football ground and beyond. ‘Redhead lagoon, that way a mile or so. Lovely spot. You walk through the Awabakal reserve and…’

A shout from the work site interrupted her. She craned forward over the fence. The slab had cracked diagonally and they had lifted one of the sections free to expose the top of the well.

It was almost comical to see the way every man gathered around the hole jumped back. I walked across and found out why before I’d taken more than four steps-the stink coming up from below was foul and cloying. It seemed to be almost a physical thing, like a gas and be reaching out to wrap itself around you and go up your nostrils and into your mouth to fill your head with corruption.

Withers was the first to do anything. ‘Torch,’ he snapped. Someone handed him a big battery pack flashlight and he advanced to the hole and shone it down. I found a handkerchief in my pocket and tied it across my face before I joined Withers at the well. In the strong beam of light I saw that the well had bricked sides and was about twenty feet deep, maybe more. The walls were slimy and grey-green. I stared down, trying not to breathe, and could just make out something lumpy and misshapen at the bottom. It looked like a couple of bags of rubbish. Withers moved the torch and the light reflected off heavy, dark plastic. The bags sat in several centimetres of grey ooze. The smell seemed to get worse.

Withers stepped back and looked over to where one of the cops was pulling on heavy rubber boots and gloves and a plastic overall. Withers tossed him the torch. ‘Have fun,’ he said.

The team got busy rigging up some tackle to permit things to go down into the well and come up again. Withers and I retired to the shade of a tree near the rough brick barbeque. Withers had evidently sent out for cigarettes because he now had a pack and a lighter of his own. He lit up and blew smoke up into the branches of the tree. I untied the handkerchief and wiped my face with it. After the stink from the pit, the tobacco smoke smelled almost good.

‘Leslie Morton’s going to love this,’ Withers said. ‘This is just what we need. We’ve had a serial killer living in our midst for a couple of years and it takes a dago kid worried about his sister’s cherry to take care of him.’

‘Inspector,’ one of the cops yelled. ‘Press.’

Withers lit another cigarette from the stub of his last. ‘Tell ‘em to piss off. No-one gets in here. No pictures. Understand?’

There was a little commotion at the side of the house and some voices were raised. Something was being lifted clear of the well.

‘Fuck it,’ Withers said. ‘This is going to blow sky high.’

‘Can you get in touch with Glen? She shouldn’t get too close to the Costis, not if the press starts to sort out what’s going on here.’

‘You’re right.’ Withers summoned our driver over and issued instructions to him to contact Senior Sergeant Withers and get her to report in. The cop, looking relieved to be getting away from what was going on in the backyard, hurried off to do his bidding. Withers lit another cigarette and we went across to where activity around the hole had stopped. Two heavy plastic garbage bags, covered in slime, lay on the cement. Both had been torn; a human knee, or part of a knee, stuck out of the hole in one bag; from the other a hand protruded. The smell was like ammonia and rotting fish combined. ‘Jesus Christ,’ Withers said. ‘But only two?’ That’s when I told him about Oscar Bach’s interest in the Redhead lagoon.