Andrew cleared his throat. ‘Mr White, a woman whom you knew well and with whom you had an intimate relationship has just been murdered. What you might or might not feel about that is not our business. However, as you are no doubt aware, we are looking for a murderer, and unless you try to help us this very minute we will be forced to have you taken to the police station in Sydney.’
‘I’m going to Sydney anyway so if that means you’ll pay for my plane ticket, fine by me.’
Harry didn’t know what to think. Was Evans White as tough as he was trying to make out, or was he suffering from deficient mental faculties? Or an inadequately developed soul, a typically Norwegian concept? Harry wondered. Did courts anywhere else in the world judge the quality of a soul?
‘As you wish, Mr White,’ Andrew said. ‘Plane ticket, free board and lodging, free solicitor and free PR as a murder suspect.’
‘Big deal. I’ll be out again within forty-eight hours.’
‘And then we’ll offer you a round-the-clock tail, a free wake-up service, maybe even the odd free raid thrown in as well. And who knows what else we can cook up.’
Evans knocked back the rest of the beer and sat fiddling with the label on the bottle. ‘What do you gentlemen want?’ he said. ‘All I know is that one day she was suddenly gone. I was going to Sydney, so I tried to ring her, but she wasn’t at work or at home. The day I arrive in Sydney I read in the newspaper she’s been found murdered. I walk around like a zombie for two days. I mean to say, m-u-r-d-e-r-e-d? What are the statistical chances of ending your life being throttled to death, eh?’
‘Not high. But have you got an alibi for the time of the murder? It’d be good . . .’ Andrew said, taking notes.
Evans started with horror. ‘Alibi? What do you mean? Surely you can’t suspect me, for Christ’s sake. Or are you telling me the cops have been on the case for a week and still don’t have any real leads?’
‘We’re looking at all the evidence, Mr White. Can you tell me where you were for the two days before you arrived in Sydney?’
‘I was here, of course.’
‘Alone?’
‘Not completely.’ Evans grinned and chucked the empty stubby. It flew through the air in an elegant parabola before landing noiselessly in the rubbish bin by the worktop. Harry nodded acknowledgement.
‘May I ask who was with you?’
‘You already have. But fine, I’ve nothing to hide. It was a woman called Angelina Hutchinson. She lives in the town here.’
Harry noted that down.
‘Lover?’ Andrew asked.
‘Sort of,’ Evans answered.
‘What can you tell us about Inger Holter? Who was she?’
‘Agh, we hadn’t known each other for that bloody long. I met her on Fraser Island. She said she was headed down to Byron Bay. It’s not far from here, so I gave her my phone number in Nimbin. A few days later she rang me and asked if she could stop over one night. She was here for more than a week. After that we met in Sydney when I was there. That must have been two or three times. As you know, we didn’t exactly become an old married couple. And besides she was already beginning to be a drag.’
‘A drag?’
‘Yes, she had a soft spot for my son, Tom-Tom, and let her imagination run away about a family and a house in the country. That didn’t suit me, but I let her jabber on.’
‘Jabber on about what?’
Evans squirmed. ‘She was the kind that’s hard-faced when you meet her, but she’s as soft as butter if you tickle her under the chin and tell her you love her. Then she can’t do enough for you.’
‘So she was a considerate young lady?’
Evans clearly didn’t like the path this conversation was following. ‘Maybe she was. I didn’t know her that well, as I said. She hadn’t seen her family in Norway for a while, had she, so maybe she was starved for . . . affection, someone being there for her, know what I mean? Who bloody knows? As I said, she was a stupid, romantic chick, there was no evil in her . . .’
Evans’s voice faltered. The kitchen fell silent. Either he’s a good actor or he does have human emotions after all, Harry thought.
‘If you didn’t see any future in the relationship, why didn’t you split up with her?’
‘I was already on my way. Standing in the doorway about to say bye, sort of. But she was gone before I could do anything. Just like that . . .’ He snapped his fingers.
Yes, his voice has thickened, no doubt about it, Harry thought.
Evans gazed down at his hands. ‘Quite a way to depart, wasn’t it.’
12
Quite a Big Spider
THEY DROVE UP steep mountain roads. A signpost indicated the way to the Crystal Castle.
‘The question is: is Evans White telling the truth?’ Harry said.
Andrew avoided an oncoming tractor.
‘Let me share a crumb of my experience with you, Harry. For over twenty years I’ve been talking to people with a variety of reasons for lying or telling the truth. Guilty and innocent, murderers and pickpockets, bundles of nerves and cold fish, blue-eyed baby faces, scarred villain faces, sociopaths, psychopaths, philanthropists . . .’ He searched for more examples.
‘Point taken, Andrew.’
‘. . . Aboriginals and whites. They’ve all told their stories with one objective: to be believed. And do you know what I’ve learned?’
‘That it’s impossible to say who’s lying and who isn’t?’
‘Exactly, Harry!’ Andrew began to warm to the topic. ‘In traditional crime fiction every detective with any self-respect has an unfailing nose for when people are lying. It’s bullshit! Human nature is a vast impenetrable forest which no one can know in its entirety. Not even a mother knows her child’s deepest secrets.’
They turned into a car park in front of a large green garden with a narrow gravel path winding between a fountain, flower beds and exotic species of tree. A huge house presided over the garden and was obviously the Crystal Castle that the Nimbin sheriff had pointed out to them on a map.
A bell above the door announced their arrival. This was clearly a popular place, for the shop was packed with tourists. An energetic woman greeted them with a radiant smile and welcomed them with such enthusiasm it was as if they were the first people she had seen here in months.
‘Is this your first time here?’ she asked, as though her crystal shop were a habit-forming affair people flocked to regularly once they had been hooked. And for all they knew that is exactly how it might have been.
‘I envy you,’ she said after they confirmed it was. ‘You’re about to experience the Crystal Castle for the first time! Take that corridor there. On the right is our wonderful vegetarian cafe with the most exquisite meals. After you’ve been there, go left, into the crystal and mineral room. That’s where the real action is! Now, go, go, go!’
She waved them off. After such a build-up, naturally it was an anticlimax to discover that the cafe was basically a standard outlet selling coffee, tea, lettuce with yogurt and lettuce sandwiches. In the designated crystal and mineral room there was an exhibition of glittering crystals, Buddha figures with crossed legs, blue and green quartz and uncut stones in an elaborate light display. The room was filled with a faint aroma of incense, soporific pan-pipe music and the sound of running water. Harry considered the shop nice enough, though a touch camp, and unlikely to take your breath away. What might cause respiratory difficulties, however, were the prices.
‘Ha ha,’ Andrew laughed, on seeing some of the price tags. ‘The woman’s a genius.’
He pointed to the generally middle-aged and evidently well-off customers in the shop. ‘The flower-power generation has grown up. They have adult jobs, adult incomes, but their hearts are somewhere on an astral planet.’
They walked back to the counter. The energetic woman was still wearing her radiant smile. She took Harry’s hand and pressed a blue-green stone in his palm.
‘You’re Capricorn, aren’t you? Put this s
tone under your pillow. It will remove all the negative energy in the room. It costs sixty-five dollars, but you really should have it, I think, so let’s say fifty.’
She turned to Andrew.
‘And you must be a Leo?’
‘Oh no, ma’am, I’m a policeman.’ He discreetly held up his badge.
She blanched and stared at him in horror. ‘How awful. I hope I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘Not as far as I know, ma’am. I presume you’re Margaret Dawson, formerly White? If so, may we have a word with you in private?’
Margaret Dawson quickly pulled herself together and called one of the girls to take charge of the till. Then she accompanied Andrew and Harry to the garden where they sat round a white wooden table. A net was stretched out between two trees. At first Harry thought it was a fishing net, but upon closer inspection it proved to be an enormous spider’s web.
‘Looks like rain,’ she said, rubbing her hands.
Andrew cleared his throat.
She bit her lower lip.
‘I’m sorry, Officer. This makes me so nervous.’
‘That’s OK, ma’am. Quite a web you’ve got there.’
‘Oh, that. That’s Billy’s, our mouse spider. He’s probably asleep somewhere.’
Harry unconsciously tucked his legs under him. ‘Mouse spider? Does that mean it eats . . . mice?’ he asked.
Andrew smiled. ‘Harry’s from Norway. They aren’t used to big spiders.’
‘Oh, well, I can put your mind at rest. The big ones aren’t dangerous,’ Margaret Dawson said. ‘However, we do have a lethal little creature called a redback. It likes towns best, though, where it can hide in the crowd, so to speak. In dark cellars and damp corners.’
‘Sounds like someone I know,’ Andrew said. ‘But back to business, ma’am. Your son.’
Now Mrs Dawson really did blanch.
‘Evans?’
Andrew eyed Harry.
‘To our knowledge, he hasn’t been in trouble with the police before, Mrs Dawson,’ Harry said.
‘No, no, he hasn’t. Thank God.’
‘We actually drove by because your place was on our route back to Brisbane. We were wondering if you knew anything about an Inger Holter.’
She ran the name through her memory. Then she shook her head.
‘Evans doesn’t know a lot of girls. The ones he does know he brings here to meet me. After having a child with . . . with this terrible girl whose name I’m not sure if I want to remember, I forbade . . . I said I thought he should wait a bit. Until the right one came along.’
‘Why should he wait?’ Harry asked.
‘Because I said so.’
‘Why did you say so, ma’am?’
‘Because . . . because it’s not the right moment –’ she glanced at the shop to signal that her time was precious – ‘and because Evans is a sensitive boy who can be easily hurt. There’s been a lot of negative energy in his life, and he needs a woman he can trust one hundred per cent. Not these . . . tarts that just muddle his thinking.’
Grey cloud cover had settled over her pupils.
‘Do you see your son often?’ Andrew asked.
‘Evans comes here as much as he can. He needs the peace. He works so hard, poor thing. Have you tried any of the herbs he sells? Now and then he brings a few along and I put them in the tea in the cafe.’
Andrew cleared his throat again. From the corner of his eye, Harry noticed a movement between the trees.
‘We’d better be off, ma’am. One last question, though.’
‘Yes?’
Andrew seemed to have something stuck in his throat – he kept coughing and coughing. The web had started to sway.
‘Have you always had such blonde hair, Mrs Dawson?’
13
Bubbur
IT WAS LATE when they landed in Sydney. Harry was dead on his feet and longing for his hotel bed.
‘A drink?’ Andrew suggested.
‘Don’t you need to get home?’ Harry asked.
Andrew shook his head. ‘I won’t meet anyone there except myself at the moment.’
‘At the moment?’
‘Well, for the last ten years. I’m divorced. Wife lives in Newcastle with the girls. I try to see them as often as I can, but it’s quite a distance and the girls will soon be big enough to have their own plans for the weekend. Then I’ll discover, I suppose, that I’m not the only man in their lives. They’re good-looking little devils, you see. Fourteen and fifteen. Shit, I should chase away every admirer that darkens the door.’
Andrew beamed. Harry couldn’t help but like this unaccustomed version of a colleague.
‘Well, that’s the way it goes, Andrew.’
‘That’s right, mate. How ’bout you?’
‘Well. No wife. No children. No dog. All I have is a boss, a sister, a father and a couple of guys I still call pals even though years pass between their calls. Or mine.’
‘In that order?’
‘In that order.’ They laughed.
‘Come for one. At the Albury?’
‘That sounds like work,’ Harry said.
‘Precisely.’
Birgitta smiled as they entered. She finished serving a customer and came over to them. Her eyes were focused on Harry.
‘Hi,’ she said.
All Harry wanted to do was curl up on her lap and go to sleep.
‘Two double gin and tonics, in the name of the law,’ Andrew said.
‘I’d prefer a grapefruit juice,’ Harry said.
She served them and leaned across the bar.
‘Thanks for yesterday,’ she whispered in Swedish to Harry. In the mirror behind her he saw himself sitting with an idiotic grin on his face.
‘Hey, hey, no Scandinavian turtle-doving here now, thank you very much. If I’m paying for the drinks we speak in English.’ Andrew shot them a stern look. ‘And now I’ll tell you young ones something. Love is a greater mystery than death.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Uncle Andrew’s going to tell you about an ancient Australian legend, to wit, the story of the giant snake Bubbur and Walla.’
They bunched up closer, and Andrew licked his lips with relish as he lit a cigar.
‘Once upon a time there was a young warrior called Walla who had fallen in love with a beautiful young woman called Moora. And she with him. Walla had successfully completed his tribe’s initiation rites, he was a man and could therefore marry whichever of the tribe’s women he liked, provided he had not been married before and she wanted him. And Moora did. Walla could hardly tear himself away from his beloved, but the tradition was that he had to go on a hunting expedition from which the spoils would be a kind of dowry for the bride’s parents, then the wedding could take place. One fine morning, the dew glistening on the leaves, Walla set out. Moora gave him a white cockatoo feather, which he wore in his hair.
‘While Walla was away Moora went out to collect honey for the feast. However, it was not so easy to find, and she had to go further from the camp than she was wont to do. She came to a valley with huge rocks. A strange silence hung over the valley, there was not a bird or an insect to be heard. She was about to leave when she spotted a nest with some big white eggs, the biggest she had ever seen. “I’ll take them to the feast,” she thought and stretched out a hand.
‘At that moment she heard something slither over the rocks, and before she had time to run or open her mouth, an enormous yellow-and-brown snake coiled itself around her waist. She fought, but could not free herself, and the snake was beginning to exert pressure. Moora looked up at the blue sky above the valley and tried to call Walla’s name, but she did not have enough air in her lungs to utter a sound. The snake’s grip tightened, and in the end all the life was squeezed out of Moora, and all the bones in her body were crushed. Then the snake slithered back into the shadows it had come from – where it was impossible to see it because the colours merged with the light-dappled trees and rocks of the valley.
‘Two days
passed before they found her crushed body among the rocks. Her parents were inconsolable and her mother wept and asked her husband what they would say to Walla when he returned home.’
Andrew gazed at Harry and Birgitta through shiny eyes.
‘The campfire was no more than embers when Walla returned from hunting the following dawn. Even though it had been a strenuous trek his steps were light and his eyes bright and happy. He went to Moora’s parents, who were sitting mute by the fire. “Here are my gifts to you,” he said. And he had brought back a good catch: a kangaroo, a wombat and emu thighs.
‘“You’ve arrived in time for the funeral, Walla, you who would have been our son,” Moora’s father said. Walla looked as if he had been slapped and could barely conceal his pain and grief, but being the hardy warrior he was, he restrained the tears and asked coldly: “Why have you not already buried her?” “Because we didn’t find her until today,” the father said. “Then I’ll accompany her and demand her spirit. Our Wirinun can heal her broken bones, then I will return her spirit and breathe life into her.” “It’s too late,” said the father. “Her spirit has already left to go where all women’s spirits go. But her killer is still alive. Do you know your duty, my son?”
‘Walla departed without a word. He lived in a cave with the other unmarried men of the tribe. He did not speak to them either. Several months passed. Walla sat on his own and refused to take part in the singing and dancing. Some thought he had been hardening his heart to try and forget Moora. Others thought he was planning to follow Moora to the women’s kingdom of death. “He will not succeed,” they said. “There is one place for women and one for men.”
‘A woman came to the fire and sat down. “You’re wrong,” she said. “He’s deep in thought, planning how he can avenge the death of his woman. Do you suppose all you have to do is grab a spear and kill Bubbur, the great yellow-and-brown snake? You’ve never seen it, but I saw it once when I was young, and that was the day my hair turned grey. It was the most frightening sight imaginable. Mark my words, Bubbur can only be defeated in one way, and that is with bravery and cunning. And I think this young warrior has those attributes.”