Drainland (Tunnel Island Book 1) (13 page)

A
wave
of humidity swept in. It felt like nuclear fallout. Romano cranked the Land Cruiser’s air-con and checked her map. This was the place. Pastor Frith’s Mission was on the southern fringe of Drainland, down under the lighthouse. It was more accessible than the camp. They had what looked like a dirt track cut down from the main road and this track was gated, locked fast with a thick chain.

She had a number for the Mission. She called it.

“Holy Beach.”

“Oh, hi. My name’s Constable Laura Romano. I was hoping to come in and have a chat with the Pastor this morning. Is he around?”

“Nah. He’s over in the camp already. Joe likes to make an early start on the day, especially days like today.”

“Who am I on with?”

“Pauline. His wife.”

“Pauline, I’m up on the road. Any chance you could come let me in?”

Pauline hesitated. “Joe…He won’t be back for lunch till midday, at the earliest. Some days he doesn’t come in at all. So—”

“That’s okay. I can wait. It’s nothing pressing.”

“Well, I guess, I could…Let me see.”

It took a good long while. Romano was dying for a cigarette but didn’t dare crack the car window. Eventually, a small woman appeared out of the scrub on a trail bike. Mid-fifties, dressed entirely in white. She wore tennis shorts, split at the side, a tank top and visor. Her hair sprang out the sides of her hat—a bright white curly fro—and it bounced slightly as she walked over.

“How you doing there, Constable? Hot enough for ya?”

“Plenty,” said Romano.

“Okay, then, follow me. Watch the bend halfway in, there’s a pothole the delivery men are always getting stuck in.”

She opened the gate and waved Romano through. They took it slow. The dry bush scrub on either side of the track was thick, rendering the nearby coastline invisible. It was only at the very end of the drive that the lighthouse appeared, and under it sat the Mission. It was planted in a long, cleared swath of land along the shoreline. The ocean expanded on either side of the buildings, a rich blue cast against the red lighthouse and the glaring white of the church walls and surrounding buildings. In another season—one with rainfall—a lawn would have made the place beautiful. Instead, the grass was brown and the whole scene shimmered in the dust. As she drove in closer, Romano noticed children in the windows of the buildings. The little faces watched them approach.

“These yours?” said Romano, stepping out into the haze.

Pauline dismounted. “Yes and no. That’s most of what we do here. Half hospital, half orphanage. We’ve got ourselves about twenty-five kids on site at the moment. But Joe is bringing new ones home every week. It’s been a rough couple of months down here.”

“So I hear.”

“You want the tour?”

“I guess,” said Romano. “Can I have a smoke first?”

T
he Mission had
four main buildings and a row of demountables tucked in behind the chapel. According to Pauline, they didn’t do much trade in the church. “Christmases and Easters. The rest of the year we store food there.” They had a white brick shed they used as a make-shift hospice. Another structure—an old hall—acted as an adult dormitory for those “trying to right themselves before leaving the camp.” The demountables were the children’s dormitories. They did not step inside any of the buildings. Pauline assured her it wasn’t pleasant. Romano took it as a given. The smell of Drainland was in the air, coming up from the beach below.

To finish, Pauline invited her into the church house. They had coffee together on the rear deck, sitting in the shadow of the lighthouse. The ocean was clear and flat. Romano could hear the waves breaking not far away.

“This isn’t half bad,” said Romano. “You could be anywhere.”

“It has its moments. Now what do you need from my Joe?”

“Not much. I’m poking around this thing we put to bed a few months back, a homicide up in the North. I just need to square away a few details. The blokes who did it, they came up from the camp. To be honest, I’m just trying to get the full lay of the land over here.”

“You haven’t been here long?”

“Not really, no. You?”

“Born here,” Pauline said.

They talked about that. Pauline told stories about the island, back before the tunnel. She said that Joe Frith had a parish proper back then, back when the North was more religious. He was from the mainland too, like her. As Pauline told it, the poor fool actually chose to come here. He felt it was his moral duty. As the morning wore on, Pauline went inside to the kitchen and fixed lunch. As she worked at the counter, Romano wandered around the living room, a second coffee in hand.

The interior of the house had a cramped, musty feel to it. The carpets were worn through, and even Romano could see that the furnishings were mismatched, cobbled together from different decades and trends. A salmon-coloured leather lounge sat by a marble coffee table. An elaborate Swedish wall unit housed an ancient television. Against the main wall stood an antique timber cabinet topped with porcelain figures (elephants and ballerinas mainly), and above the cabinet hung a grid of framed photographs.

She looked at each:

Pauline with various dogs.

The pastor with visiting bishops.

The pastor and Pauline at varying ages, surrounded with children and parishioners. Large groups by white churches and steps.

Romano scanned for familiar faces and found them: Sophie and Silvia Marr and their mother standing amongst a crowd. She took the frame from the wall and turned it over.
1995, Parish Flea Market
.

Romano took it round to Pauline. The woman tut-tutted. “Look at my hair,” she said.

“Were the Marr family part of your husband’s old parish?”

“Oh, yes. Di and Don were a big help to us back then. Don had his troubles but he was a good man, deep down. Always willing to lend a hand.”

“I don’t see him,” said Romano.

“Let me see.” Pauline took the frame and lifted it close to her face. She laughed. “He probably took this. He took a lot of photos over the years.”

“And this is from up North, before the Mission?”

“That’s right.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, you’ll have to get Joe to tell you that story. And you’ll never hear the end of it once you do.”

Romano put the photo back. Moving quickly, she snapped a photo of it for her records. If Pauline heard the digital camera beep, she made no mention of it. “Now, are you hungry, Laura?” she called. “Because I might eat.”

When Frith did not show for lunch, Pauline was apologetic. Romano couldn’t shake the feeling she was being entertained. Pauline had a way of turning the conversation to other things, of reiterating, preaching almost. She caught it more and more as they ate. Her husband was a great man in her estimation, if a little doddering and distracted. Eventually, with the sun low in the sky, she started to excuse herself. She said she had to go check on the volunteers. She had rounds of the hospice to attend to, and the children needed checking on.

“I’ve taken up enough of your time,” said Romano.

Pauline insisted she hadn’t.

They drove back up the track to the road where Pauline let her out.

“Tell your husband to give me a bell.”

“I’m sure he will. He’ll be sorry he missed you.”

“Hang on. One last thing.”

“Yes?”

“Do you know the two men from the camp? Petey and Drags? The Riders told me they were giving you and your husband some trouble recently, before they passed.”

The woman looked back up the track toward the homestead. “Can’t say I do.”

“You sure?” said Romano, and she repeated their names.

“It’s not ringing any bells,” said Pauline.

“Okay then.”

As she drove out, Romano watched Pauline in the rearview. The woman stood by the gate with her trail bike and stared at the cruiser until it was out of sight. Throughout, her face was blank.

T
he priest never did call
. Romano put him in the files. They had paper on him in the station house, all dating back to the early nineties. Frith had headed up something called the Holy Covenant Island Church until July ’94. Romano drove past the former site for it up on Burgess Point. It was a set of townhouses now. She called around to town planning, the ATO, the Roman Catholic archdiocese. In return, she got parts of the story.

Frith and his parish had opposed the tunnel. They made noise. They picketed construction sites, wrote petitions, raised funds. And then they lost. After the tunnel was built, the money came in and that was that. Religion was bad for tourism. They ran Frith and his wife out of the North, and burnt his church to the ground. The official police paperwork went nowhere past that. Detective Sergeant Bill Dranger seemed to diligently sit back and let it happen. The reports filed were a masterclass in passive-aggression.

From there, Frith went down to Drainland. The Holy Beach Mission was founded in February the following year. He and Pauline sold off the church land and obtained some sort of tenured lease from the municipal council to occupy the site under the lighthouse. According to the tax office, the Mission hadn’t earned a dime in years. Yet here was Pastor Frith—chased off by the locals to Drainland, and broke as hell—and the place was there year after year, working alongside The Doomriders and their little tropical Amsterdam. Desperate, Romano rang Vic at Angel City and asked if the Riders kicked back to the church. He laughed and hung up.

She spent a few days chasing down the Mission’s volunteers. It was another dead end. The Mission didn’t request tithing. They didn’t ask for donations. Instead they actually paid the volunteers a small stipend, enough for a few retiree nurses down in Arthurton to pay their petrol and groceries.
Where was the money coming from?
The mainland church refused to comment.

For more than a few nights in a row, Romano sat and stared into her drink and turned it over in her mind. The incompleteness of it ached:

Bodies every which way.

No hope of leaving Tunnel Island.

Running on visions, mistakes probably.

No partner, no family, no career, no nothing.

What am I waiting for?

The drugs ate at her, too. High and wide-eyed, she pored over the Gold Point thing, re-reading the files over and over, night after night after night. During the worst of it, she staggered to the end of her street and into the ocean. There she let the water wash around her, like some physical manifestation of the chaos raging in her head.

C
hristmas arrived
. It was the usual nightmare. Without fail, the day was plagued with regrets and visions of his family and his sister. Harris’s phone sat silently on the bureau. To kill some time, he checked up on Romano. He rang around. She was fine. She was spending the day at the pub. He had no such luxury. There was no forgetting in recovery. Forgetting was dangerous, a type of slipping. The easiest type of misstep.

By the new year, Harris could feel himself sliding towards that relapse. Christmas fucked him every time. And the rest of it was piling up. Romano worried him. What was she digging up? Something bad. He felt it in his bones. The island felt off-kilter and as such, he barely slept, tossing and turning to the sound of ghosts in the hall. These were all signs he understood.

He had to act.

He had to go back to the club.

He wanted it.

He told Dev.

“As long as you’re sure you want to continue down that path,” said Dev. He was no believer in The Theodor Club and what it offered.

“It’s not perfect, but it works,” said Harris knowing full well that his time—his treatment—at The Theodor was never something he would or could relinquish altogether.

“Just promise me, no Lean.”

“Her and I are done.”

Dev looked at him, narrowed his eyes.

“I promise,” said Harris.

T
he Theodor club
was housed in a four-story house built into a rock face at Point Forward. It sat on the very fringe of Arthurton’s developed areas, between the township and Silver Village. It was no easy task to get there. The road leading down to the point was unmarked, and at night the way across the outcrop proved difficult to navigate on foot. Harris knew the way by heart.

He met Lauren inside, at the bar. She led him by the arm to a booth and ordered a gin and tonic. He watched her drink it. “You look like shit, Jim,” she said. “It’s been too long between visits for you and me.”

“I’ve been—”

“You can’t just come in here after all this time and make excuses. There have to be consequences, Jim. There are always consequences and they’re pretty bad, especially for men like you. It’s going to be a lot worse this time.”

She smiled.

“Whatever you say,” said Harris.

Lauren moved fast. She grabbed him by the scalp before he realised why. “That’s right, faggot. Whatever
I
say,” she said.

No one in the bar seemed to notice.

An hour later, Lauren did what he paid her for:

She made him bleed.

He was dressed in a police uniform from the waist up and naked below. Lauren had him laid out on the floor of her workspace, cuffed to a steel loop in the skirting. As directed, she was especially brutal. She finished with one of the wider paddles. It was a higher-level instrument, but the woman had grown much stronger since his last visit.

“I’ve been working out,” she said.

Thwack.

“Working on this especially for you, you piece of shit,” she said, and pain riddled through Harris’s body. A hot burn rolled down his thighs and ass, his wrists grating against the leather of the cuffs.

For an ecstatic moment, Harris thought of nothing.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve—”

“Not good enough.”

Thwack.

Lauren moved on to a whip, and half an hour later he was ready. She knew her cues. She rolled him over and slid his cock into her hand. It only took a few seconds. Cum sprayed over him, reaching his neck and shoulders. He cried, tears dripping down his neck. All the while, Lauren patted his cheek, her hand in his beard.
That’s my boy. That’s my brother.

A
fter a shower and a massage
, Harris walked back to bar area and settled up. He knew the girl working the register. He knew most of the girls.

“How’d you go?”

“Good.” He thumbed cash out of his wallet. “I want you to tip Lauren.”

“You sticking around?”

“I wasn’t planning on it. Lean’s not here is she? It’s quiet in here.” The bar area was empty now, bar for a solitary man at the far end of the room.

“Lean’s been and gone. It’s Jackie who’s looking for you,” said the girl. “But she’s in with a client.”

“She want me to wait?”

“She mentioned it, is all.”

The Theodor had a long, broad deck area attached, and Harris limped out there to take the breeze. An hour later, Jackie Vang joined him, stiletto heels knocking hard on the timber floor. “I was beginning to think you’d been cured,” Jackie said. She was as sleek as ever, jet-black hair styled within an inch of its life, hard dark make-up on her face, a gold necklace catching the light from inside.

“Not me,” said Harris. “What do you need?”

“Here, remember this?” She handed him the copy of Thomas Bachelard’s journal, a USB stick resting on top of the papers. Jackie looked after the club’s Chinese clientele. She spoke Canto. It all came back to him: months ago, he’d handed over the journals for translation. Then, after Drainland and Petey and Drags, he’d told her not to bother.

“I thought I told you to burn this?” he said.

“I got curious and figured I could use the practice. I wish to God I had taken your advice.”

“What’s in here?” Harris asked.

“If whoever wrote this is right, someone needs to put a stop to it, because it’s fucked up. You need to a have a look at it, Jim. And I mean
you
, the old you. Not O’Shea and his new goons.”

“I don’t really…Is it that bad?”

“It’s outside the rules,” she said. She walked back to the doorway.

“Did you show this to anyone?” said Harris.

“Come on, Jim,” she said.

Harris scanned the pages and felt pure dread. Connections started to fire. All dark premonitions led to this.