Matt Eaton - Blank

“Not so crash hot. How’s yours?”

He knew she was referring to what had gone down at the restaurant. “I’ve had more interesting encounters this morning.”

“How’d it go – your meeting?” She had a way of staring at him with a disarming intensity.

“Don’t you already know the answer to that question?”

“You want me to tell you whether you really saw a vanishing man or whether it’s all in your imagination.”

Like last night.

“Something is hypnotising these people,” he told her.

“I see what you see, if you get my meaning. If you can’t tell the difference between reality and dreams, neither can I.”

He told her about Paulson and was relieved to find she was genuinely shocked. Evidently her style of mindreading did not extend to complete download.

“Where’s Eddie?” he asked her.

“Still sleeping it off.”

“We will need to keep a close eye on him. I have a feeling he’s already drinking the Cool-Aid, if you know what I mean.”

She nodded solemnly in agreement. “So what next?”

“Could I put those delightful wiles of yours to use and prevail upon you to make a few inquiries about Father Clarence Paulson? Maybe at the local church.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Talk to the police. See if they have a clue.”

The Alice Springs Police Station was an imposing two-storey brick and concrete box clad in textured sandstone, probably in an effort to soften the building’s institutional tone. From street level the wide eve of the roof felt like the long arm of the law reaching out and casting a shadow over all who approached. It was as if the building wanted to swallow you up. Simply walking to the front door of the station felt like an admission of guilt.

He carried a clean set of clothes in a Woolworths shopping bag, but had decided for now he was better off in uniform. He approached the front counter of the cop shop holding the card the constable had handed him. A female officer greeted him with detached civility, almost successful in her effort to mask her surprise at seeing an Aboriginal man in uniform.

“Good morning.”

“Hello, I’m Captain Stone Luckman from the Army. I was speaking to one of your colleagues this morning. Constable Ryan Shillingup – about the death of the priest down at the river.”

“I’m pretty sure Constable Shillingup is still at the scene.”

“Actually I was hoping to speak to whoever’s going to be in charge of the investigation.”

She looked him in the eyes and nodded then retreated to a nearby office. He heard her pick up a telephone, but could only make out a word or two of her stilted attempts to communicate with the person on the other end. Whoever it was kept cutting her off. She returned looking less than amused and pointed to a set of stairs.

“First floor. Detective Senior Sergeant Pollock will meet you. Brace yourself,” she warned.

The head of the Criminal Investigations Branch, Curtis Pollock, was not a man who stepped lightly upon the Earth. A hefty beer belly strained the buttons of a short-sleeved seersucker shirt that hung down over his loose-fitting slacks like a wet shower curtain. Pollock’s skinny chicken legs somehow defied gravity in keeping his bulbous gut aloft. He looked as if he could flop to the ground like a beached whale at any moment. The CIB chief greeted Luckman with more than a degree of surprise. Luckman saw contempt running through the man’s eyes like a tickertape.

“You got some ID?”

Luckman waved an old Army ID card under the detective’s nose. Identification hadn’t exactly been a priority since the twin disasters. It was good enough to satisfy Pollock, who directed Luckman into an office choked with filing cabinets and a desk that appeared to be the place all paperwork went to die. Pollock crashed into a long-suffering chair and pointed to another one on the other side of the desk. He picked up a takeaway coffee cup and took a long slurp, eyes firmly on his guest.

“Ryan, that is, Constable Shillingup, mentioned he’d seen you down at the river. Taken an interest have ya?”

“Not me personally, but the Army, yes. I wasn’t entirely forthcoming with your colleague this morning because it’s somewhat sensitive. I’m in Alice on orders from General Neil Shearer, the head of Defence Intelligence.”

Pollock shifted slightly in his seat. “That right?”

“I didn’t know Clarence Paulson. But I believe his death is directly involved with what I’m here to investigate.”

“Which is?”

Luckman leaned in to the desk and dropped his voice to a whisper. “What I’m about to tell you is classified. It cannot leave this office. We have reason to believe Paulson was being used to pass intelligence from a US spy to the New Zealand government.”

Pollock snorted derisively into his coffee cup. “The Kiwis? You’re kiddin’ arncha?”

“I’m afraid I’m not,” Luckman told him dolefully.

“What possible reason does New Zealand have to spy on its own allies?” Pollock asked him.

“I’m afraid the details are classified. Suffice to say New Zealand has been fooling the world for a long time. They are not just a benign nation of hobbit-loving rugby fanatics. I mean, just look at the Maori warrior heritage. They still are warriors. Cold warriors. But New Zealand isn’t rich in mineral resources like Australia. They’ve been trading big ideas on the international black market to fund their clandestine operations. Ever since the French sank the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbour in 1985, New Zealand’s been developing its own intelligence network across the Pacific Rim. The clever part about it is that no-one – least of all the Americans – has suspected a thing.”

For a moment Luckman thought he might have laid it on a bit too thick, but Pollock’s expression was tinged with genuine shock. He appeared to be buying it. More to the point, if the detective had the slightest inkling of what was really happening in the world he would have blown Luckman’s story out of the water immediately.

“Needless to say the Americans don’t know about Paulson and his links to New Zealand intelligence. General Shearer would prefer to keep it that way, as I’m sure you can understand.”

“Absolutely,” Pollock agreed. “Last thing anyone in Alice wants to do is get the Yanks off side.”

“I thought you might see it that way,” Luckman told him honestly.

“But our blokes had been fairly certain this was just a domestic,” Pollock insisted. “The man we arrested at the murder scene…”

“Wozza?”

“Billy Warigal, yeah – he’s the brother of Paulson’s housekeeper, Daisy Moreton. We thought maybe old Father Clarence had been slipping Daisy the pork sword and Warigal found out about it.”

“Well I’d very much like to be kept appraised of the situation,” said Luckman.

“Bit of a coincidence isn’t it? You being here at exactly the same time he was murdered?”

“It may be no coincidence,” he conceded honestly. “You said your officers ‘had been’ certain. Has that changed? Is there anything else that might lead you to believe this wasn’t merely a domestic gone wrong?”

“The initial post-mortem examination suggests the body had been moved. It’s also possible Paulson had been dead for several days, although that’s yet to be confirmed.”

“Have you searched Father Paulson’s house yet?”

“I was just about to head over there when you showed up.”

“Mind if I tag along?”

Pollock chewed on his lip as he mulled it over. “S’pose not.”

After 10 minutes of waiting for Pollock outside the station, Luckman started to wonder whether the detective had blown him off. He checked for signs of activity through the first-floor window of the station but saw nothing. He did, however, notice Wozza’s girlfriend leaning forlornly against the building.