The Bat Read online

  Toowoomba tried to get Bobby to his feet, but the two assistants shoved him away. There were scattered claps, but they faded. The whistles increased when the MC went over and raised Toowoomba’s hand in the air. Andrew shook his head.

  ‘Must have been a few blokes who put their money on the local champion today,’ he said. ‘Idiots! Come on, let’s collect the cash and have a few serious words with this Murri drongo!’

  ‘Robin, you bastard. You should be locked up – and I mean it!’

  Robin ‘The Murri’ Toowoomba’s face lit up in a big smile. He was holding an ice-filled rolled towel over one eye.

  ‘Tuka! I could hear you out there. Have you started gambling again?’ Toowoomba spoke in a low voice. A man who is used to being listened to, Harry thought instantly. The sound was pleasant and gentle, not like someone who had just broken the nose of a man almost twice his size.

  Andrew snorted. ‘Gambling? In my days betting money on a Chivers boy could never be called gambling. But now I suppose nothing is certain any more. Fancy allowing yourself to be taken in by a bloody white yahoo. Where’s it all going to end?’

  Harry cleared his throat.

  ‘Oh, yeah, Robin, say hello to a friend of mine. This is Harry Holy. Harry, this is Queensland’s worst hoodlum and sadist, Robin Toowoomba.’ They shook hands and Harry felt as if his hand had been trapped in a door. He groaned a ‘How are you?’ and received an ‘Absolutely magnificent, mate – how are you yourself?’ and a gleaming smile by way of an answer.

  ‘Never better,’ Harry said, massaging his hand.

  These Australian handshakes were crippling him. According to Andrew, it was important to say how unimaginably well things were going; a bland ‘fine, thanks’ could be interpreted as very cold.

  Toowoomba pointed his thumb at Andrew. ‘Talking of hoodlums, has Tuka told you that he once used to box for Jim Chivers?’

  ‘I suppose there are still quite a few things I don’t know about . . . er, Tuka? He’s a secretive guy.’

  ‘Secretive?’ Toowoomba laughed. ‘He speaks in tongues. Tuka will tell you everything you need to know so long as you know what you have to ask. Of course, he hasn’t told you he had to resign from the Chivers team because he was considered too dangerous, has he. How many cheekbones, noses and jaws have you got on your conscience, Tuka? Everyone reckoned he was the best young boxing talent in New South Wales. But there was one problem. He didn’t have any self-control – no discipline. In the end he knocked down a ref because he thought he had stopped the fight too soon. In Tuka’s favour! That’s what I call bloodthirsty. Tuka was suspended for two years.’

  ‘Three and a half, thank you very much!’ Andrew grinned. ‘He was a real drongo, I’m telling you. I only nudged the bastard of a ref, but you wouldn’t believe it, he fell and broke his collarbone.’

  Toowoomba and Andrew clapped their hands and collapsed in laughter.

  ‘Robin was hardly born when I was boxing. He just quotes what I’ve told him,’ Andrew said. ‘Robin was one of a group of disadvantaged kids I worked with whenever I had time. We did some boxing sessions, and to teach the boys the importance of self-control I told them a couple of half-true stories about myself. As a deterrent. Obviously Robin here didn’t understand, he followed me instead.’

  Toowoomba became serious. ‘We’re usually good boys, Harry. We let them have a few heaves before we chuck in the odd punch so they can see who’s boss, know what I mean? After that it’s not long before they give up. But this bloke could box, he could have hurt someone. Blokes like him get what they ask for.’

  The door opened. ‘Fuck you, Toowoomba – as if we didn’t have enough problems already. You only broke the nose of the local police chief’s son-in-law.’ The MC looked furious and underlined this fact by spitting on the floor with a resounding splat.

  ‘Pure reflex action,’ Toowoomba said, examining the snuff-brown liquid. ‘It won’t happen again.’ He sent Andrew a surreptitious wink.

  They got up. Toowoomba and Andrew hugged each other and uttered a few concluding remarks in a language which left Harry mystified. He gave Toowoomba a pat on the shoulder to render any more handshaking redundant.

  ‘What was the language you were speaking there?’ Harry asked after they had got into the car.

  ‘Oh, that. It’s a kind of Creole, a mixture of English and words of Aboriginal origin. It’s spoken by lots of Aboriginals across the country. What did you think of the boxing?’

  Harry took his time to answer. ‘It was interesting to see you earn a few dollars, but we could have been in Nimbin by now.’

  ‘If we hadn’t come here today you wouldn’t have been able to go to Sydney this evening,’ Andrew said. ‘You don’t have dates with women like her and just run off. We might be talking about your future wife and mother of two tiny Holies, Harry.’

  They both smirked as they passed trees and low houses as the sun went down on the eastern hemisphere.

  Darkness had fallen before they reached Sydney, but the TV mast stood like a massive light bulb in the centre of the town and showed them the way. Andrew drew in at Circular Quay, not far from the Opera House. A bat whirled in and out of the car headlights at great speed. Andrew lit a cigar and motioned for Harry to remain in the car.

  ‘The bat is the Aboriginal symbol of death. Did you know that?’

  Harry did not.

  ‘Imagine a place where people have been isolated for forty thousand years. In other words, they haven’t experienced Judaism, never mind Christianity and Islam, because a whole ocean has separated them from the closest continent. Nevertheless they come up with their own history of creation, the Dreaming. The first man was Ber-rook-boorn. He was made by Baiame, the uncreated, who was the beginning of everything, and who loved and took care of all living things. In other words, a good man, this Baiame. Friends called him the Great Fatherly Spirit. After Baiame established Ber-rook-boorn and his wife in a good place, he left his mark on a sacred tree – yarran – nearby, which was the home of a swarm of bees.

  ‘“You can take food from anywhere you want, in the whole of this country that I have given you, but this is my tree,” he warned the two people. “If you try to take food from there, much evil will befall you and those who come after you.” Something like that. At any rate, one day Ber-rook-boorn’s wife was collecting wood and she came to the yarran tree. At first she was frightened at the sight of the holy tree towering above her, but there was so much wood lying around that she did not follow her first impulse – which was to run away as fast as her legs could carry her. Besides, Baiame had not said anything about wood. While she was gathering the wood around the tree she heard a low buzzing sound above her head, and she gazed up at the swarm of bees. She also saw the honey running down the trunk. She had only tasted honey once before, but here there was enough for several meals. The sun glistened on the sweet, shiny drops, and in the end Ber-rook-boorn’s wife could not resist the temptation and she climbed up the tree.

  ‘At that moment a cold wind came from above and a sinister figure with enormous black wings enveloped her. It was Narahdarn the bat, whom Baiame had entrusted with guarding the holy tree. The woman fell to the ground and ran back to her cave where she hid. But it was too late, she had released death into the world, symbolised by the bat Narahdarn, and all of the Ber-rook-boorn descendants would be exposed to its curse. The yarran tree cried bitter tears over the tragedy that had taken place. The tears ran down the trunk and thickened, and that is why you can find red rubber on the bark of the tree nowadays.’

  Andrew puffed happily on his cigar.

  ‘Gives Adam and Eve a run for their money, doesn’t it.’

  Harry nodded and conceded there were a number of parallels. ‘Perhaps it’s just that people, wherever they live on the globe, somehow share the same visions or fantasies. It’s in our nature, wired into the hard drive, so to speak. Despite all the differences, sooner or later, we still come up with the same answers.’

  �
�Let’s hope so,’ Andrew said. He squinted through the smoke. ‘Let’s hope so.’

  9

  A Sea Nettle Jellyfish

  HARRY WAS WELL down his second Coke when Birgitta arrived at ten minutes past nine. She was wearing a plain white cotton dress, and her red hair was collected in an impressive ponytail.

  ‘I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t come,’ Harry said. It was said as a joke, but he meant it. He had started worrying the moment they agreed to meet.

  ‘Really?’ she said in Swedish. She sent Harry a mischievous look. He had a feeling this was going to be a great evening.

  They ordered Thai green curry with pork, chicken with cashew nuts cooked in a wok, an Australian Chardonnay and Perrier water.

  ‘I must say I’m pretty surprised to meet a Swede so far from home.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be. There are about ninety thousand Swedes in Australia.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Most emigrated here before the Second World War, but quite a lot of young people left in the eighties with unemployment on the rise in Sweden.’

  ‘And there was me thinking Swedes would be missing their meatballs and the midsummer dancing before they’d reached Helsingør.’

  ‘That must be Norwegians you were thinking about. You’re crazy, you lot! The Norwegians I’ve met here started yearning for home after a few days, and after two months they were back in Norway. Back home to woolly cardigans!’

  ‘But not Inger?’

  Birgitta fell quiet. ‘No, not Inger.’

  ‘Do you know why she stayed here?’

  ‘Probably the same reason as for most of us. You go on holiday, fall in love with the country, the climate, the easy lifestyle or a man. You apply to have your permit extended. Scandinavian girls don’t exactly have a problem getting jobs in bars, and suddenly it’s such a long way home and it’s so simple to stay.’

  ‘Is that how it was for you, too?’

  ‘More or less.’

  They ate in silence for a while. The curry was thick, strong and good.

  ‘What do you know about Inger’s last boyfriend?’

  ‘As I said, he popped by the bar one night. She’d met him in Queensland. On Fraser Island, I think it was. He looked like the version of hippy I thought had died out long ago, but is alive and well here in Australia. Long braided hair, colourful, baggy clothes, sandals. Like he’d walked in off Woodstock beach.’

  ‘Woodstock’s inland. New York.’

  ‘But wasn’t there a lake they swam in? I seem to remember that.’

  Harry ran a closer eye over her. She was sitting hunched over her food, concentrating. The freckles were bunched in a cluster over her nose. She was pretty, that was Harry’s opinion.

  ‘You shouldn’t know that kind of thing. You’re too young.’

  She laughed. ‘And what are you – past it?’

  ‘Me? Well, some days I might be. It comes with the job – somewhere inside you age all too quickly. But I hope I’m not so disillusioned and jaded that I can’t feel alive now and then.’

  ‘Oh, poor you . . .’

  Harry had to smile. ‘You can think what you like, but I’m not saying that to appeal to your maternal instinct, even though that might not have been a bad idea. It’s just the way it is.’

  The waiter passed the table and Harry took the opportunity to order another bottle of water.

  ‘You’re a tiny bit damaged every time you unravel another murder case. Unfortunately, as a rule there are more human wrecks and sadder stories, and fewer ingenious motives, than you would imagine from reading Agatha Christie. At first I saw myself as a kind of knight dispensing justice, but at times I feel more like a refuse collector. Murderers are generally pitiful sorts, and it’s seldom difficult to point to at least ten good reasons why they turned out as they did. So, usually, what you feel most is frustration. Frustration that they can’t be happy destroying their own lives instead of dragging others down with them. This probably still sounds a touch sentimental . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to appear cynical. I understand what you mean,’ she said.

  A gentle breeze from the street caused the flame of the candle on the table to flicker.

  Birgitta told Harry about how she and her boyfriend had packed their rucksacks in Sweden four years ago and set off, how they had travelled by bus and hitched from Sydney to Cairns, slept under canvas and in backpacker hotels, worked there as receptionists and cooks, dived by the Great Barrier Reef and swum side by side with turtles and hammerhead sharks. They had meditated on Uluru, saved their money to catch the train from Adelaide to Alice Springs, been to a Crowded House concert in Melbourne and hit the wall in a motel in Sydney.

  ‘It’s strange how something that works so well can be so . . . wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’

  Birgitta hesitated. Perhaps she was thinking she’d said too much to this rather direct Norwegian.

  ‘I don’t really know how to explain it. We lost something on the way that had been there and we’d taken for granted. We stopped looking at each other and soon we stopped touching each other. We came to be no more than travelling companions, someone it was good to have around because double rooms were cheaper and tents safer with two. He met a rich man’s daughter, German, in Noosa and I kept on travelling so that he could continue the affair in peace. I didn’t give a shit. When he arrived in Sydney I told him I’d fallen in love with an American surf freak I’d just met. I don’t know if he believed me, perhaps he understood that I was giving both of us a pretext for finishing things. We tried to argue in the motel room in Sydney, but we couldn’t even do that any more. So I told him to go back to Sweden first and I would follow.’

  ‘He would have quite a head start on you now.’

  ‘We were together for six years. Would you believe me if I said I can hardly remember what he looked like?’

  ‘I would.’

  Birgitta sighed. ‘I didn’t think it would be like that. I was sure we would get married and have children and live in a little suburb of Malmö with a garden and Sydsvenska Dagbladet on the doorstep, and now – now I can hardly remember the sound of his voice, or what it was like to make love with him, or . . .’ She looked up at Harry. ‘Or how he was too polite to tell me to shut up while I was babbling on after a couple of glasses of wine.’

  Harry grinned. She hadn’t commented on the fact that he hadn’t drunk any of the wine.

  ‘I’m not polite, I’m interested,’ he said.

  ‘In that case, you’ll have to tell me something personal about you, other than that you’re a policeman.’

  Birgitta leaned across the table. Harry told himself not to look down her dress. He sensed her aroma and greedily breathed in the fragrance. He must not let himself be duped. Those cunning bastards at Karl Lagerfeld and Christian Dior knew exactly what was required to trap a poor man.

  She smelt wonderful.

  ‘Well,’ Harry began, ‘I have a sister, my mother died, I live in a flat I can’t get rid of in Tøyen, Oslo. I have no lengthy relationships behind me, and only one has left any marks.’

  ‘Really? And there’s no one in your life now?’

  ‘Not really. I have a few uncomplicated, meaningless relationships with women I occasionally ring if they don’t ring me.’

  Birgitta frowned.

  ‘Something wrong?’

  ‘I’m not sure if I approve of that kind of man. Or woman. I’m a bit old-fashioned like that.’

  ‘Of course, I’ve put all that stuff behind me,’ Harry said, raising the glass of Perrier.

  ‘And I’m not sure I like these glib answers of yours, either,’ Birgitta said, raising her glass.

  ‘So what do you look for in a man?’

  She rested her chin on her hand and gazed into the air considering the question. ‘I don’t know. I think I know more about what I don’t like in a man than what I do.’

  ‘What don’t you like? Apart from glib answers.’


  ‘Men who try to check me out.’

  ‘Do you suffer a lot?’

  She smiled. ‘Let me give you a tip, Casanova. If you want to charm a woman, you have to make her feel unique, make her feel she’s being given special treatment, something no one else gets. Men who try to pick up girls in bars don’t understand that. But I suppose that means nothing to a libertine like you.’

  Harry laughed. ‘By a few I mean two. I said a few because that sounds a bit wilder, it sounds like . . . three. One, by the way, is on her way back to her ex according to what she told me the last time I saw her. She thanked me because I had been so uncomplicated and the relationship had been so . . . well, meaningless, I assume. The other is a woman I started a relationship with and who now insists that since it was me who left, it is my duty to ensure that she has a modicum of a sex life until either of us finds someone else. Hang on – why have I gone all defensive here? I’m a normal man who wouldn’t harm a flea. Are you implying that I’m trying to charm someone?’

  ‘Oh yes, you’re trying to charm me. Don’t deny it!’

  Harry didn’t deny it. ‘All right. How am I doing?’

  She took a long swig from her wine glass and gave the matter some thought.

  ‘B, I reckon. Moderate anyway. No, I think it will have to be a B . . . you’re doing quite well.’

  ‘Sounds like B minus.’

  ‘There or thereabouts.’

  It was dark down by the harbour, almost deserted, and a fresh wind had sprung up. On the steps to the illuminated Opera House an unusually overweight bride and groom posed for the photographer. He directed them hither and thither, and the newly-weds seemed to be very annoyed at having to move their large bodies. In the end, though, they came to an agreement, and the nocturnal photo session in front of the Opera House ended in smiles, laughter and perhaps a little tear.

  ‘That’s what they must mean by bursting with happiness,’ Harry said. ‘Or perhaps you don’t say that in Swedish?’

  ‘Yes, we do, you could be so happy you burst in Swedish, too.’ Birgitta took off her hairband and stood in the wind by the harbour railing, facing the Opera House.