The Bat

  ‘Yes, you could,’ she repeated, as if to herself. She turned her freckled nose to the sea, and the wind blew her red hair back.

  She looked like a sea nettle jellyfish. He didn’t know a jellyfish could be so beautiful.

  10

  A Town Called Nimbin

  HARRY’S WATCH SHOWED eleven as the plane landed in Brisbane but the stewardess on the tannoy insisted it was only ten.

  ‘They don’t have summer time in Queensland,’ Andrew informed him. ‘It was a big political issue up here, culminating in a referendum and the farmers voted against it.’

  ‘Wow, sounds like we’ve come to redneck country.’

  ‘I reckon so, mate. Up until a few years ago long-haired men were refused entry to the state. It was banned outright.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Queensland’s a bit different. Soon they’ll probably ban skinheads.’

  Harry stroked his close-cropped skull. ‘Anything else I ought to know about Queensland?’

  ‘Well, if you’ve got any marijuana in your pockets you’d better leave it on the plane. In Queensland the drugs laws are stricter than in other states. It was no coincidence that the Aquarius Festival was held in Nimbin. The town’s just over the border, in New South Wales.’

  They found the Avis office where they had been told a car would be ready and waiting for them.

  ‘On the other hand, Queensland has places like Fraser Island, where Inger Holter met Evans White. The island’s actually no more than a huge sandbank, but on it you can find a rainforest and lakes with the world’s clearest water and sand that is so white the beaches look as if they’ve been made out of marble. Silicon sand it’s called, because the silicon content’s so much higher than in normal sand. You can probably pour it straight into a computer.’

  ‘The land of plenty, eh?’ said the guy behind the counter, passing them a key.

  ‘Ford Escort?’ Andrew wrinkled his nose, but signed. ‘Is it still going?’

  ‘Special rate, sir.’

  ‘Don’t doubt it.’

  The sun was frying the Pacific Highway, and Brisbane’s skyline of glass and stone glittered like crystals on a chandelier as they approached.

  From the freeway eastwards they drove through rolling green countryside alternating between forest and cultivated field.

  ‘Welcome to the Australian outback,’ Andrew said.

  They passed cows grazing with lethargic stares.

  Harry chuckled.

  ‘What’s up?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Have you seen the comic strip by Larson where the cows are standing on two legs chatting in the meadow, and one of them warns: “Car!”’

  Silence.

  ‘Who’s Larson?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  They passed low wooden houses with verandas at the front, mosquito nets in the doorways and pickup trucks outside. They drove past broad-backed workhorses watching them with melancholy eyes, beehives and penned pigs blissfully rolling in the mud. The roads became narrower. Around lunchtime they stopped for petrol in a little settlement a sign informed them was called Uki, which had been chosen as Australia’s cleanest town for two years running. It didn’t say who had won last year.

  ‘Holy macaroni,’ Harry said as they trundled into Nimbin.

  The town centre was about a hundred metres in length, painted all colours of the rainbow, with a crop of characters that could have come from one of the Cheech & Chong films in Harry’s video collection.

  ‘We’re back in 1970!’ he exclaimed. ‘I mean, look over there. Peter Fonda in a clinch with Janis Joplin.’

  They slowly cruised down the street as somnambulist eyes followed them.

  ‘This is great. I didn’t think places like this existed any more. You could just die laughing.’

  ‘Why?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s funny?’

  ‘Funny? I can see it’s easy to laugh at these dreamers nowadays. I can see that the new generation thinks the flower-power lot were a bunch of potheads with nothing else to do except play guitars, read their poems and screw one another as the whim took them. I can see that the organisers of Woodstock turn up for interviews wearing ties and talk with amusement about the ideas of those times, which obviously seem very naive to them now. But I can also see that the world would have been a very different place without the ideals that generation stood for. Slogans like peace and love may be clichés now, but back then we meant it. With all our hearts.’

  ‘Aren’t you a bit old to have been a hippy, Andrew?’

  ‘Yes. I was old. I was a veteran hippy, a slyboots,’ Andrew grinned. ‘Many a young girl received her first introduction into the intricate mysteries of lovemaking with Uncle Andrew.’

  Harry patted him on the shoulder. ‘I thought you were just talking about idealism, you old goat.’

  ‘Of course. This was idealism,’ Andrew said with indignation. ‘I couldn’t leave these fragile flower buds to some awkward, pimply teenager and risk the girl being traumatised for the rest of the seventies.’

  Andrew glanced out of the car window and chuckled. A man with long hair, a beard and a tunic was sitting on a bench and making the peace sign with two raised fingers. A placard with a drawing of an old, yellow VW camper announced ‘The Marijuana Museum’. Beneath, in smaller letters: ‘Admission: one dollar. If you can’t pay, come in anyway.’

  ‘This is Nimbin’s dope museum,’ Andrew explained. ‘It’s mostly crap, but I seem to remember they have some interesting photos of the Mexico trips with Ken Kesey, Jack Kerouac and the other pioneers when they were experimenting with consciousness-expanding drugs.’

  ‘When LSD wasn’t dangerous?’

  ‘And sex was just healthy. Wonderful times, Harry Holy. You shoulda been there, man.’

  They parked further up the main street and walked back. Harry took off his Ray-Bans and tried to look like a civilian. It was clearly a quiet day in Nimbin, and Harry and Andrew ran the gauntlet between the vendors. ‘Good grass! . . . Best grass in Australia, man . . . Grass from Papua New Guinea, mind-blowin’.’

  ‘Papua New Guinea,’ Andrew snorted. ‘Even here in the grass capital people walk around thinking grass is better if it comes from somewhere far enough away. Buy Australian, I say.’

  A pregnant yet thin girl was sitting on a chair in front of the ‘museum’ and waved to them. She could have been anything from twenty to forty and was wearing a loose, vivid skirt and a buttoned-up blouse, making her stomach stand out with the skin stretched like a drum. There was something vaguely familiar about her, Harry thought. And from the size of her pupils Harry was able to conclude there had been something more stimulating than marijuana on her breakfast menu that day.

  ‘Looking for something else?’ she asked. She had observed that they hadn’t shown any interest in buying marijuana.

  ‘No—’ Harry started to say.

  ‘Acid. You want LSD, don’t you.’ She leaned forward and spoke with urgency and passion.

  ‘No, we don’t want any acid,’ Andrew said in a low, firm voice. ‘We’re looking for something else. Understand?’

  She sat gazing at them. Andrew made a move to go on, but then she jumped up, apparently unaffected by the large stomach, and took his arm. ‘OK, but we can’t do that here. You’ll have to meet me in the pub over there in ten minutes.’

  Andrew nodded, and she turned and hurried down the street with her large bump, a small puppy running at her heels.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking, Harry,’ Andrew said, lighting up a cigar. ‘It wasn’t nice to trick Mother Kindheart into believing we would buy some heroin. The police station’s a hundred metres up the street and we could find what we need on Evans White there. But I have a hunch this’ll be quicker. Let’s go and have a beer and see what happens.’

  Half an hour later Mother Kindheart entered the near-empty pub with a man who seemed at least as hunted as she was. He resembled the Klaus Kinski version of Count D
racula: pale, lean, dressed in black with dark bags under his eyes.

  ‘There you go,’ Andrew whispered. ‘You can hardly accuse him of not testing the stuff he sells.’

  Mother Kindheart and the Kinski clone made straight for them. The latter did not appear to want to spend any more time in daylight than was absolutely necessary and skipped the small talk.

  ‘How much?’

  Andrew sat demonstratively with his back to them. ‘I prefer there to be as few people present as possible before we get down to brass tacks, mister,’ he said without turning.

  Kinski tossed his head and Mother Kindheart left with a peeved expression. She probably worked on a percentage basis, and Harry assumed the trust between her and Kinski was as it always was with junkies: non-existent.

  ‘I’ve got nothing on me, and if you’re cops I’ll cut your balls off. Show me the bread first, then we can get out of here.’ He spoke fast, he was nervous and his eyes jumped about.

  ‘Is it far?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘It’s a short walk, but a lo-ong trip.’ What was meant to be a smile was a brief glimpse of teeth before it was gone.

  ‘Good on ya, mate. Sit down and shut up,’ Andrew said, showing him his police badge. Kinski froze. Harry stood up and patted the back of his belt. There was no reason to check whether Harry really had a weapon.

  ‘What is this amateur dramatics stuff? I’ve got nothing on me, I told you, didn’t I?’ He slumped defiantly into the chair opposite Andrew.

  ‘I take it you know the local sheriff and his assistant? And they probably know you. But do they know you’ve started selling horse?’

  The man shrugged. ‘Who said anything about horse? I thought it was grass we—’

  ‘Of course. No one said anything about junk, and it’s unlikely anyone will so long as you give us some information.’

  ‘You’re kidding, aren’t you. Would I risk being beheaded for snitching just because two out-of-town cops who don’t even have anything on me come bursting in and—’

  ‘Snitching? We met here, unfortunately couldn’t agree on the price of the goods and that was that. You’ve even got a witness that we met here on normal business. Do as we tell you and you’ll never see us again, and nor will anyone else here.’

  Andrew lit a cigar, peered through narrow slits at the poor junkie on the other side of the table, blew smoke into his face and continued.

  ‘Should we not get what we’re after, however, we might put on our badges when we leave here and perform a couple of arrests, which wouldn’t exactly increase your popularity in the local community. I don’t know if cutting the balls off snitches is used up here – after all, potheads are peaceful folk as a rule. But they know the odd trick or two, and it wouldn’t surprise me if right out of the blue the sheriff didn’t stumble across your whole stock, quite by chance. Potheads aren’t so happy about competition from the hard stuff, you know, at least not from junkie snitches. And I’m sure you know all about the penalties for dealing in large quantities of heroin, don’t you.’

  More blue cigar smoke in Kinski’s face. It’s not every day you have the chance to blow smoke into an asshole’s face, Harry thought.

  ‘OK,’ Andrew said, after no reply was forthcoming. ‘Evans White. Tell us where he is, who he is and how we can get hold of him. Now!’

  Kinski looked around. His large, hollow-cheeked skull turned on the thin neck, making him look like a vulture hovering over some carcass, checking anxiously to see if the lions were returning.

  ‘That all?’ he asked. ‘Nothing else?’

  ‘Nothing else,’ Andrew said.

  ‘And how do I know you won’t be back asking for more?’

  ‘You don’t.’

  He nodded as though he had known it was the only answer he would get.

  ‘OK. He’s no big fish yet, but from what I’ve heard he’s on the way up. He’s worked for Madam Rousseau, the grass queen up here, but now he’s trying to set up his own business. Grass, acid and perhaps a bit of morphine. The grass is the same as the rest that’s sold here, local production. But he must have connections in Sydney and delivers grass there in exchange for good, cheap acid. Acid’s what it’s all about now.’

  ‘Where can we get hold of Evans?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘He’s in Sydney quite a bit, but I saw him in town a couple of days ago. He’s got a kid with a chick from Brisbane who used to hang out here. I don’t know where she is now, but the kid’s definitely in the block of flats where he lives when he’s in Nimbin.’

  He explained where the block was.

  ‘What sort of fella is White?’ Andrew pressed.

  ‘What can I say?’ He scratched the beard he didn’t have. ‘A charming arsehole, isn’t that what they’re called?’

  Andrew and Harry didn’t know if that was what they were called, but nodded anyway.

  ‘He’s straight enough to deal with, but I wouldn’t want to be his girl, if you know what I mean.’

  They shook their heads to say they didn’t know what he meant.

  ‘He’s a playboy, not exactly known for making do with one chick at a time. There are always arguments with his women, they scream and shout, so it’s not unusual for one of them to sport a shiner once in a while.’

  ‘Hm. Do you know anything about a blonde-haired Norwegian girl called Inger Holter? She was found murdered by Watson’s Bay in Sydney last week.’

  ‘Really? Never heard of her.’ He clearly wasn’t an avid newspaper reader, either.

  Andrew stubbed out his cigar and he and Harry got up.

  ‘Can I rely on you keeping your traps shut?’ Kinski asked with a doubtful glare.

  ‘Of course,’ Andrew said, striding towards the door.

  ‘What was the meal with our Swedish witness like?’ Andrew asked after they had made a courtesy stop at the police station, a building that looked like any other house on the street, except for a little sign on the lawn announcing its purpose.

  ‘Good. Quite spicy, but good,’ Harry answered pertly.

  ‘Come on, Harry. What did you talk about?’

  ‘Lots. Norway and Sweden.’

  ‘I see. Who won?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘What’s Sweden got that Norway hasn’t?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘First things first: a couple of good film directors. Bo Widerberg, Ingmar Bergman—’

  ‘Ah, film directors,’ Andrew snorted. ‘We’ve got them, too. Edvard Grieg, on the other hand, is one of yours.’

  ‘Wow,’ Harry said. ‘I didn’t know you were a connoisseur of classical music. In addition.’

  ‘Grieg was a genius. Take, for example, the second movement of the symphony in C minor where—’

  ‘Sorry, Andrew,’ Harry said, ‘I grew up with two-chord punk and the closest I’ve been to a symphony is Yes and King Crimson. I don’t listen to music from previous centuries, OK? Everything before 1980 is Stone Age. We have a band called the Dumdum Boys who—’

  ‘The C minor symphony was first performed in 1981,’ Andrew said. ‘Dumdum Boys? That’s a very pretentious moniker.’

  Harry gave up and learned about Grieg all the way to the White residence.

  11

  A Dealer

  EVANS WHITE REGARDED them through half-open eyes. Strands of hair hung over his face. He scratched his groin and belched deliberately. He didn’t seem at all surprised to see them. Not because he was expecting them, but probably because he didn’t think visits were anything special. After all, he was sitting on the region’s best acid, and Nimbin was a small place where rumours travelled fast. Harry imagined that a man like White did not bother with tiny amounts and certainly not from his home, but that was hardly likely to deter people from showing up for the odd wholesale purchase.

  ‘You’ve come to the wrong place. Try in town,’ he said, closing the screen door.

  ‘We’re from the police, Mr White.’ Andrew held up his badge. ‘We’d like to talk to you.’

  Evans turned
his back on them. ‘Not today. I don’t like cops. Come another time with an arrest warrant, a search warrant or whatever, then we’ll see what we can do for you. Until then goodbye.’

  He slammed the inner door as well.

  Harry leaned against the door frame and shouted: ‘Evans White! Can you hear me? We are wondering whether this is you in the photo, sir. And if so, whether you knew the blonde woman sitting beside you. Her name’s Inger Holter. She’s dead now.’

  Silence for a while. Then the door hinges creaked. Evans peered out.

  Harry placed the photo against the netting.

  ‘She didn’t look so good when Sydney police found her, Mr White.’

  In the kitchen newspapers were scattered across the worktop, the sink was overflowing with plates and glasses, and the floor had not seen soapy water for a few months. Nevertheless, Harry could see at a glance that the place did not show any signs of real decay, and that it wasn’t the home of a junkie on his uppers. There were no week-old leftovers, there was no mould, there was no stink of piss and the curtains weren’t drawn. Furthermore, there was a kind of basic order in the room which made Harry realise Evans White still had a grip on things.

  They found themselves chairs, and Evans fetched a stubby from the fridge which he put straight to his mouth. The belch resounded round the kitchen and was followed by a contented chuckle from Evans.

  ‘Tell us about your relationship with Inger Holter, Mr White,’ Harry said, waving away the smell of the belch.

  ‘Inger was a nice, attractive and very stupid girl with some notion that she and I could be happy together.’ Evans studied the ceiling. Then he sniggered contentedly again. ‘I think, in fact, that sums it up very neatly.’

  ‘Have you any idea how she could have been killed or who could have done it?’

  ‘Yes, we have newspapers up in Nimbin, too, so I know she was strangled. But who did it? A strangler, I suppose.’ He threw his head back and grinned. A curl fell over his brow, his white teeth glistened in the tanned face and the laughter lines around his brown eyes stretched back towards ears hung with pirate rings.