Blank, p.22
Blank, page 22
“What’s that?” Luckman pondered.
“Says here it’s the result of ingesting gold. It reacted with the hydrochloric acid in his stomach.”
“He’d been eating gold?”
“Or someone forced him eat it,” Pollock suggested.
“None of which sounds much like an act of drunken violence,” Luckman concluded.
Pollock wasn’t so quick to dismiss the possibility. He’d spent years dealing with the blacks and their squalid town camps. Luckman wasn’t like them. He was from the city. Had he ever mopped up after a fight with a broken beer bottle? Did he know how many children in those camps were neglected or abused by their own family members? It was easy to call someone racist when you weren’t the one living on the front line.
Luckman was still talking. “...why I need to speak with him. I’ve had no contact with Warigal. He’s been in your lock-up virtually the entire time I’ve been in Alice Springs. If he can confirm my story, as I believe he will, surely that will prove to you I’m telling the truth.”
Even though it felt like an admission of defeat, Pollock rang the constable on duty at the cell block. “Get Wozza out and whack him in interview room number one.”
Upon arrival they saw the prisoner’s left eye was swollen and bruised. Warigal didn’t have the injury when Pollock had interviewed him two days ago. One of the uniforms had used him as a punching bag.
“Cops do that to you?” Luckman asked him. Warigal nodded. Luckman sighed. “Go on detective, ask him.”
“Warigal, I want you to tell me whether you’ve noticed anything strange in town lately.”
For some time it appeared as if the prisoner either hadn’t heard the question or was ignoring it. Finally he looked up at them. Something was troubling him deeply.
“Anything at all,” Pollock prompted.
“You mean like everyone in town forgettin’ everything? Or maybe like when some strange spaceship comes down out of the sky and dumps Father Clarence’s dead body at my feet on the riverbed?”
“Spaceship?”
Luckman didn’t look surprised. In fact he reacted like he had just been vindicated.
“He remembers because he’s been in your lock-up,” said Luckman. “All the concrete has shielded him from the psychic amnesia program.”
Luckman was starting to sound paranoid and delusional.
“Wozza – remember the day the Army came?” the soldier asked.
Warigal frowned. “The Americans?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I thought we were being bloody invaded. All those trucks roaring into the camps. I thought shit, here we go, off to Afghanistan. They’re gonna dump all the blackfellas over there with the Muslims.”
Pollock felt uneasy again. Luckman was staring at him and actually started to laugh. “But they were saving you, weren’t they? You have this man right here to thank for that. He went to the blackfella council to make it all happen. You buggers would all be vegetables now if Detective Pollock hadn’t done what he did.”
Pollock dimly recalled confronting the council chairman. If memory served he hadn’t exactly treated the man with a whole lot of respect, but he’d been under time constraints and in the end they got the job done. He rubbed his hand across his bald and sweaty pate. “Look, I hear ya. Something big is going on with the Yanks. I’m not gonna pretend I understand. But I’m sorry – as a policeman I have to say this isn’t exactly ironclad evidence of Warigal’s innocence.”
“True,” Luckman admitted. “But I know where we can find that evidence. We could take a little drive to Pine Gap and check out the base for ourselves.”
“That’s US territory out there.”
“Not it’s not – it’s a joint Australian-US facility.”
“I’m not gonna create an international incident just to keep you happy – it’s more than my job’s worth.”
“Detective, there’s no-one left alive to take your job away. You and your fellow officers are all that stands between this town and complete social breakdown.”
“Time to man up, eh?” Warigal suggested.
Pollock resisted the impulse to smash Wozza’s face into the table.
Luckman’s voice softened. “Curtis, this reluctance you’re feeling is all down to them. You might be many things, but you’re no coward.”
“All right, all right,” Pollock relented. “Just do me a favour and lay off the pop psychology.”
“One thing though,” Luckman added, “there’s no point just driving up to the front gate.”
“So what are we s’posed to do?”
“There’s a dirt track heading north from the base perimeter.”
“I know that road,” said Warigal. “Through the hills.”
“We’d need reinforcements,” said Pollock.
“The more the merrier,” agreed Luckman.
Forty-Four
Pollock insisted Warigal’s hands remained cuffed as they made their way to the rear of the police station.
Four uniforms were waiting in the car park.
“I asked for six men,” Pollock growled at them, ignoring the fact one of the four people standing in front of him was, in fact, a woman. Constable Rachael Athol was also the highest ranking of the quartet.
“Sergeant Willis says we’re all he can spare sir,” replied Athol.
“This is going to be a shit fight Rachael, you sure you...”
“I’m ready for whatever shit you can dish up Sarge,” she informed him dryly.
Pollock didn’t bother to answer. He opened the passenger door of a police four-wheel-drive, pulled out a map from the glove compartment and spread it out on the bonnet.
“We need to work out the best way to approach the base from another direction.”
“It’s easiest from the north,” said Warigal. “Off Larapinta Drive.”
Pollock ran his finger along the curving line that represented Larapinta Drive as it wound westward and away from town. “What about the ranges? There are no roads and a whole lot of hills. Doesn’t look like such a good route to me.”
“If you take these bloody cuffs off I can show you,” said Warigal.
Pollock hesitated.
“Come on sarge, you can always shoot me if I try to run,” taunted Wozza.
Pollock pulled a set of keys from his pocket and removed the restraints. Warigal rubbed his wrists. “You run and I’m aiming for your balls,” Pollock told him.
Warigal jumped about in mock pain. “Pollock’s got mah bollocks.”
The uniforms tried not to laugh as Warigal stepped up to the bonnet of the car and pointed to the map. Luckman peered over his shoulder. He already knew the route, having seen it from the air earlier in the day.
Warigal pointed to an area about 12 kilometres west of Alice. “There, that’s the best way in,” he assured them.
“I been there. A dirt track runs all the way to the edge of the base – about seven or eight clicks.”
There were two lines of ranges to the north of Pine Gap that converged into one further west. The trail cut through both of them.
“That’s a long, dusty trip,” Pollock complained.
“Maybe you should sit this one out, detective,” Constable Athol suggested facetiously.
“No-one’ll see us coming,” Warigal added.
Luckman was fairly certain that surprise was not on their side, but he said nothing.
“Maybe we should just forget the whole idea,” Pollock suggested.
“Suits me,” Constable Athol admitted, and her colleagues nodded in assent.
Luckman knew it was time to speak up. “Detective, have you noticed how everyone is reluctant to leave town?”
“Why would anyone want to go driving around in the desert? Unless you’re a blackfella, I mean.” He glanced at Warigal. “No offence.”
“Bite me,” Warigal returned.
Luckman stepped closer so only Pollock would hear him. “They’ve gotten inside your head,” he whispered. “They don’t want you going out there.”
“Save the conspiracy theories for the pub, will ya?” Pollock ridiculed, laughing in a failed attempt to mask his own discomfort.
“What are we after?” inquired Athol.
“We’ll know when we see it,” Pollock replied.
Athol turned to the other uniforms. “Looks like we’re going for a drive in the country.”
“Shall we go then?” Luckman suggested.
“Right you lot,” Pollock ordered the constables, “grab a four-by-four and follow us. Captain Luckman, you sit in the back with Warigal and keep an eye on him.”
Luckman waited until they were underway to make one more request. “There are a few more people I’d like to take with us.”
Pollock acquiesced without objection. He pulled up outside the police station, where Pat, Mel and Bell were waiting. Mel had her camera bag slung over her shoulder.
Pat beamed as he hopped into the back of the 4WD. “Wozza – which way brudda.”
“Which way, Patty. You know these jokers?”
“Yeah brudda – we closin’ the Gap.”
The blackfellas chuckled to themselves.
“You a sight for sad eyes, brudda,” Warigal admitted.
“Don’t you mean sore eyes?” Pollock corrected.
“Ah know what ah bloody mean, sarge,” Wozza snapped.
“Watch your mouth, son. You’re still in police custody.”
“Ah, stop squeezin’ mah bollocks. Ya know ah didn’t do it.”
Larapinta Drive cut long and sweeping lines through a countryside that was greener than Luckman would have expected. To their left, the land rose toward a line of ranges from which the road maintained a safe distance. On either side of the road, small clumps of trees followed the lines of minor water courses that wound their way through the landscape from the higher terrain.
They passed the turn off to Simpsons Gap, where the ranges were cleft neatly in two by the persistent waters of Roe Creek. It seemed incredible that water had any power at all over this country, considering there was so little of it.
No-one said a word, but tension began to rise fast inside the cabin.
“My guts are killing me, I’ve gotta pull over,” said Pollock.
“We’re almost at the turn-off,” said Warigal.
“Keep going,” Luckman demanded. “It’s only going to get worse. You want me to drive, Curtis?”
“It’s a police car, you’re not driving.”
“This is the place isn’t it Pat?” Warigal inquired.
“Yeah. Turn here,” Pat confirmed.
The dirt road came off the highway at an angle then turned sharply and pointed like an arrow toward a group of five houses, maybe half a kilometre away.
“Someone live here?” asked Pollock.
“A bunch of old bushies,” said Pat. “Friends of ours. Three or four families. They keep to themselves.”
The track dipped as it crossed a creek bed about 100 metres away from the buildings. As they traversed the creek, a dark black cloud descended on the windscreen of the LandCruiser.
“Windows up,” Pat yelled.
But they weren’t quick enough. A swarm of blowflies filled the cabin, forcing Pollock to halt the car as everyone flung doors open to escape the onslaught. The other 4WD pulled up behind them and the uniforms found themselves in a similar predicament. They leapt from the car like their lives depended on it, waving their heads about madly.
“Never seen ’em this bad,” Pat admitted.
“Where have they all come from?” Luckman wondered.
“Must be something dead up there,” said Pollock, pointing at the houses.
There was a terrible pall of decay in the air. The flies were relatively easy to kill, but the slaughter itself was distinctly unpleasant. It took them several minutes to chase the swarm out of the cars and away from themselves. About 50 metres up the track they came across the source of the stench. The decomposing bodies of six adults were scattered around the compound – four men and two women, each crawling with maggots and flies. They had been picked apart by other desert scavengers.
Constable Athol gagged and turned away.
Bell stared at the carnage, shaking his head in dismay. “What the hell happened here?”
“It’s like Jonestown,” said Pollock.
Luckman examined one of the corpses, which was only barely recognisable as a man. “His fingers are broken.”
Bell checked out another one. “This one’s had his head caved in.”
“No-one touch a thing,” Pollock ordered, turning to the constables. “Cordon off the area, and get the scientific unit out here.”
Warigal and Pat were hanging back near the creek bed, examining the dirt track that led up to the compound. “You two – found something?” Pollock inquired.
“No fresh tyre marks apart from ours,” said Pat. “Whoever did this came by air or they came in from the other direction.”
“Or it could be murder-suicide,” suggested Constable Athol.
“That’d cut back on the paper work wouldn’t it?” Mel snarled facetiously.
“What now detective?” Luckman asked Pollock.
“This is as far as I go. I’ve got a major crime scene on my hands.”
“They’re probably just Blanks, poor buggers,” Mel decided.
Luckman nodded in agreement.
“What’s a Blank?” asked Athol.
No-one bothered to answer.
Forty-Five
“I’m going to need your car,” Luckman told Pollock.
“Like hell.”
“Look, you can shoot me or you can give me the damn car. If it makes you feel better, I’ll commandeer the bloody thing under martial law.”
Athol and the other constables looked somewhat alarmed by the implication as Pollock lobbed the keys at Luckman a little harder than necessary. “Warigal stays with me,” Pollock insisted.
“But he’s the one who knows the trail,” Luckman complained.
“You’ll be right,” said Wozza. “Just keep going south.”
“What could possibly go wrong?” said Mel.
The corpses were probably just a group of unfortunates who didn’t get picked up when the town was evacuated. They went Blank and died of exposure and desperation like billions of others the world over. But Luckman’s paranoia wouldn’t allow him to dismiss the idea that they’d been murdered and left here as some sort of medieval-style warning.
Assuming, of course, the hallucinations hadn’t already begun.
“Go on then, get out of here before I think better of it,” Pollock told them. “But for Christ’s sake, drive back and around the houses, not through my crime scene.”
A breakaway trail led them past the compound and onto the main track heading south toward the ranges. Luckman quickly began to feel as if the landscape was about to swallow them whole. Nausea and uneasiness hit each of them in turn, the pain intensifying the further they travelled.
“Probably a good thing we left that fat copper behind,” Bell concluded. “He’d be giving up by now,” he added, just before he stuck his head out the front passenger window to throw up.
Luckman was driving. Mel placed her hand gently on his shoulder from the back seat. “I don’t want to alarm you, but this is starting to feel awfully familiar. No police reinforcements – just the four of us. Again.”
“The thought had crossed my mind,” he murmured.
It was only about a half kilometre from one side to the other in the first line of ranges, but it took 10 minutes of slow, methodical driving. The trail was littered with rock falls and in several places small garden beds of weed or spinifex had spontaneously sprouted in the middle of the tyre tracks. No-one had used this trail in a long time.
“I feel like I’m coming down with the flu or something,” Mel complained.
“Me too,” Bell admitted.
“Yeah, same,” said Pat. “Mind you, all that back there was enough to make anyone lose their lunch.”
“Your spirit man – what do you call him?” Bell asked suddenly.
“Dog,” Luckman replied.
“Or Perrurle,” Pat added.
Bell pointed to a hill on their right. “That him up there?”
A naked Aboriginal man painted head to toe in white stood like a sentinel on the ridge line above them. “Yeah, that’s him,” Luckman confirmed.
“Just so we’re on the same page, that’s the same fella you were seeing on the Gold Coast?”
“Yep.”
“So you weren’t losing your marbles after all.”
“The jury’s still out on that one,” Luckman admitted.
“We can all see him now,” said Mel.
“What I mean is, after this morning how do any of us know what’s real?” Luckman asked her.
“For one thing, Dog’s not shooting at us this time,” Pat pointed out.
“True,” Luckman admitted.
The car moved through the ranges and onto an open plain. The second line of hills was about a kilometre away, but the road in front of them suddenly vanished. On a whim, Luckman turned the 4WD left to follow a line of trees along flat terrain, figuring their roots would keep the ground stable.
“There he is again,” Bell cried. “Off to the right now. You’re going the wrong way.”
Luckman grimaced and had just begun to slow down when the nose of the car dipped sharply as the front end fell into a ditch and the car bottomed out. Luckman hopped out to see how bad it was. His worst suspicions were immediately confirmed.
“Stupid bastard,” he yelled at himself.
The car was perched on a large rock embedded in the sand, leaving the front wheels spinning in the air. The rear wheels alone wouldn’t shift the car without damaging the drive train.
“Everyone out,” he said. “I hope this thing has a winch.”
Pat circled the vehicle. “There’s one on the front. Nothin’ on the back.”
“Typical. All right, I guess we winch forward.”
“Can’t do that,” Bell told him. “You’ll rip the guts out of the car.”
“You got a better idea?”
“How about we push and you try to reverse?”
