Garry Disher - Blood Moon

‘Of course.’

There were two chairs in the dismal office. Moorhouse took the straight-back chair, Ellen the squeaky swivel chair behind the desk. Opening her notebook, Ellen said, ‘Tell me about Mr Roe.’

The deputy head stared at the wall, appearing to weigh up her words, so that Ellen was afraid the earlier frankness would be replaced by spin, but then Moorhouse said, ‘First, I don’t hold with the government supporting a chaplaincy scheme, not when there are experienced counsellors available. I believe in the strict separation of church and state.’

‘This is a private school,’ Ellen pointed out.

‘No matter. I believe in a secular education. It protects kids from dogma and superstition. It prioritises rational inquiry, which usually flies out the window when the God-botherers get involved.’

‘Mmm,’ said Ellen, ‘but what does this have to do with Lachlan Roe?’

‘Oh look,’ Moorhouse grimaced apologetically, holding up a finger, ‘it’s possible that many chaplains are able to forget their religious ties and training and give helpful, neutral advice. But not Roe.’

‘He preached? Gave bad advice?’

‘Both.’

‘How on earth would a man like that be appointed school chaplain?’

‘It’s hardly a system where quality control matters,’ said Moorhouse sourly. ‘Lachlan’s brother works for Ollie Hindmarsh, and Ollie Hindmarsh’s children went to Landseer, and Ollie Hindmarsh championed the chaplaincy scheme, and Ollie Hindmarsh is on the school council.’

‘Ah.’

‘No talent required.’

‘What do the kids think of Mr Roe?’

‘They’re not stupid: they think he’s a joke.’

Ellen had been searching the chaplain’s desk as they talked, finding stationery items, a lump of chewing gum and an empty bottle of vodka. And a diary.

‘But some of them do make appointments to see him,’ she said, spinning the diary around, her forefinger stabbing the name Zara Selkirk. ‘This kid. Yesterday afternoon.’

Moorhouse peered at the entry. Something in her face shut down. ‘Oh.’

‘I’ll need to speak to her,’ Ellen said.

‘I don’t believe she’s in today,’ Moorhouse said.

Ludmilla Wishart finished a morning’s work in her office at Planning East, then drove to Penzance Beach, a secluded holiday town several kilometres around the coast from Waterloo. She was relieved to be out and about, away from both the hovering of her boss and her husband’s suspicions. Adrian had phoned her several times, saying, ‘Just checking in, darling’ and ‘What shall we have for dinner?’ and ‘Keep your receipts if you use the Golf today.’ He needed to know where she was and what she was doing. He’ll phone again, she thought, and someone in the office will tell him I’m out, and he’ll stew on it. Her heart fluttered. She didn’t know how much longer she could go on like this. But you don’t just walk out on a marriage, do you?

Ludmilla parked her Golf outside a beach shack on Bluff Road and knocked on the screen door. A hazy shape appeared. ‘Mill! Good or bad news?’

‘Good news, Carl.’

She stepped back to let him out. Carl Vernon was in his sixties, whiskery, gnarled and appealingly untidy in shorts, sandals and black-rimmed glasses. ‘The Trust came through for us?’

Ludmilla showed him a fax. It said that the property known as ‘Somerland’, on Bluff Road in Penzance Beach, had been classified by the National Trust as a building of historical importance. He gave her an exuberant hug. ‘Mill, that’s fantastic’

The grey-haired man and the young woman stood side-by-side and gazed across to the exclusive seaward side of Bluff Road, which ran along the top of a cliff overlooking the township and the sea. Somerland was a small fisherman’s cottage dating from the early years of the twentieth century. In profile it had a nineteenth-century style sawtooth roofline, with a verandah, a crooked chimney and a paling fence. Nestled amid ti-trees and pines, it was the best-situated house in Penzance Beach, with glorious views of the curving sand, the breakwaters fingering the little bay, the yachts puddling about in the stretch of water between the town and Phillip Island.

Carl himself enjoyed only a small slice of that view, over Somerland’s low roof and between one wall and a clump of ti-trees, for he lived on the wrong side of Bluff Road, the humble fibro shack side. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that he and his neighbours lived increasingly in the shadows of the vast, prideful glass and concrete structures to the left and right of Somerland, places that were written up in Architectural Digest but didn’t pretend to be homes. Carl and his neighbours didn’t want another monstrosity to go up, and they especially didn’t want the old fisherman’s cottage to be pulled down.

And Somerland had certainly been under threat. There were two plastic-sleeved notices tacked to stakes at the driveway entrance: a demolition permit dating from May, and a more recent application to build a mansion that would out-monster all of the others. All moot now: using her influence and knowledge, together with the help and drive of Penzance Beach locals like Carl Vernon, Ludmilla had succeeded in convincing the National Trust to classify the old house.

‘The next step is an emergency application for heritage protection from the planning minister,’ she told Vernon. ‘I’ve already set that in motion.’

They gazed at Somerland. It dreamed under the silent pines as if it had taken root there, merging naturally with the soil, the trees and the sky. It might have gone unrecognised and been demolished if Carl Vernon hadn’t decided to keep mentally active in his retirement years by writing a history of Penzance Beach. According to his research, Somerland had been built by the town’s founder and remained in the descendants’ hands until last year, when the elderly owner died.

Carl gave Ludmilla another hug. Insects snapped in the trees and the perfumed air. Somewhere a radio played in a back yard. A child dressed in a faded yellow skirt and pink T-shirt came banging out of the house next door, grabbed a tricycle and buzzed around on it. ‘Hi, Mr Vernon!’ she called.

Vernon waved. ‘Hi, Holly.’

Holly disappeared around the side of the house to the back yard. ‘I thought only leathery old retirees lived up here,’ Ludmilla murmured.

Vernon noted the hint of teasing, mostly because it was so rare. ‘I represent that remark!’

She smiled gloriously, just as a small red car crept into view on Bluff Road. A Citroen diesel, a costly, pert little thing. Ludmilla Wishart groaned and swayed. Alarmed, Vernon placed his arm around her. ‘Mill?’

She recovered. ‘It’s nothing.’

His arm was still supporting her. She shrugged it off and put some distance between them while the Citroen seemed to speed up a little, as though it knew where it was going now. It swept into the kerb, tyres scratching up dust, and a man got out. He was about thirty, wearing a white cotton shirt over dark blue cargo pants and deck shoes. His face as he came storming up to Carl’s verandah was in a rictus of fury, waves of strong emotion rolling off him, barely contained.

‘Ludmilla,’ he said, and Carl thought how apt was the phrase ‘through gritted teeth’.

‘Please, Adrian,’ Ludmilla said.

The guy turned to Carl, switched on a big smile and shot out his hand. ‘And you are?’

Vernon hadn’t been a teacher for nothing. ‘No, the question is: And you are?’

‘Mr Vernon,’ Ludmilla said tonelessly, ‘this is my husband, Adrian. Darling, Mr Vernon is behind the campaign to save that old fisherman’s cottage I was telling you about.’