“I’m fairly certain whoever is doing all this is getting at people while they’re asleep,” he said.
“You mean like Freddie Krueger?”
“Something like that.” There was a nagging sense of panic in his guts that this mission was already doomed to failure.
“How’d you go with your inquiries?” he asked.
“I found another local Catholic priest. Just so you know, I might have left him with the impression that I was a plain-clothes detective. He said he knew Father Paulson. Very upset to hear he’d been killed. Had nothing but kind words for the man. I did pick up thoughts of travel. When I asked, he said he thought Paulson had been some sort of liaison for the Vatican Bank.”
“That’s got to be a cover story,” Luckman told her.
“Why? Who do you think he really is?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“So tell me about the rest of your day.”
“I’ve just been back at that café to meet my disappearing man for a second time.”
“You are not crazy,” she assured him. “You’re one of the most mentally focused people I’ve ever met.” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Tell me something – ever heard of the normalcy bias?”
He shook his head. “Where do you get this stuff?”
“I’m not just an ace news camera operator you know. I was about to complete a Masters in Philosophy before the shit hit the fan. The normalcy bias is a mental state that affects how people react to disasters. It’s the expectation that because life has been safe and predictable, it’ll remain that way forever. It’s why people underestimate the risk of catastrophes, and it’s why they can’t cope afterwards.”
“That’s philosophy?”
“No that’s psychology. Just be quiet and listen for a moment. They say normalcy bias was why so many Jews failed to flee Hitler’s Germany before it was too late. Too many were convinced something like the Holocaust could never happen.”
“You think we’re seeing that type of reaction here.”
“No doubt, although its effects are being magnified by some external source. Something that plays upon the self-delusional aspects of cognitive dissonance.”
“I was just about to say that,” he remarked dryly.
“Cognitive dissonance is when you have two conflicting, but equally strong, beliefs about the world.”
“As in when something changes but you don’t want it to,” Luckman realised.
She nodded. “Exactly. It’s the central mechanism at work in our minds when we deal with the need for change of any sort. Often people simply try to ignore it, hoping it will go away.”
“The driving force of conservative politics.”
“We want life to stay the same, but it never does. Some changes are unavoidable. When they happen, if they’re big enough, we’re compelled to adjust our belief systems.”
“Or to irrationally pretend that nothing has happened.”
“That would be hard to maintain in isolation, but when an entire town’s on board – that’s a different story,” she told him.
He smiled. “I spent some time with the detective in charge of this murder case. Spun him a tale about how New Zealand was this grand new player in world espionage. He knows nothing of the floods and the earthquakes that wiped New Zealand off the map. In his mind, none of that has happened.”
Mel leaned back on the bed and closed her eyes. He grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet.
“Stay with me, sleepy head.”
“So what now?” she muttered wearily.
“Turns out my disappearing man is Father Paulson’s personal assistant. Or bodyguard. Anyway he suggested we take a little excursion tonight.”
Twenty-Nine
Luckman was unsurprised to hear Bell wanted no part of a break and enter. He said he was happy to stay put at the motel and watch for trouble, although Luckman suspected he would probably just fall asleep again.
Clarence Paulson’s house was about 15 minutes away on foot. The quickest route was straight across the river bed, which, by now, was bathed in eerie moonlight. Luckman took Mel past the place where Paulson’s body had been discovered.
“Someone dumped the body here,” he explained. “The Aboriginal couple are just patsies to keep the police occupied. I can’t see that they had any reason to kill him, although Detective Pollock seems determined to focus on the notion of some mythical domestic dispute.”
Mel stopped in her tracks. “What are we doing, Luckman? I take it you haven’t forgotten why you came here?”
“Whatever weird shit is happening in this place, that mob at Pine Gap have gotta be wrapped up in it. If I just waltz out there now they’ll see me coming a mile off.”
They finished the rest of their journey in silence. Paulson’s house was in total darkness. Luckman pulled himself over the brick wall and opened a small door beside the main gate to let Mel in.
“You hang here in the front yard and keep an eye out for trouble,” he whispered. “If anyone turns up, run to the back door and knock.”
“Who’s going to turn up?”
“Probably no-one but let’s not take any chances.”
The rear of the house was likewise shrouded in darkness. He spotted the back door, but also noticed a large shed a short distance away. It had a roller door and a window. He peered through the window. It was pitch black inside. He glanced around and decided to risk shining his torch through the window. There was a US Army truck parked on the other side of the roller door. He had no idea what to make of it, but it was surely confirmation the defence base was linked to Paulson’s death.
All the entry points to the shed were locked. He would have to break the window to get in. That would almost certainly prompt the neighbours to call the police. He headed for the house. He found a key under a pot plant as Favaloro had said he would. He opened the back door, but made sure to put the key back where he had found it before going inside. He pulled out his torch again and quietly padded around to check for Daisy the housekeeper. Her room was empty. If she wasn’t still in police custody she had headed for the hills. He found his way to Paulson’s office, pulled the curtains closed and then turned on a desk lamp.
It occurred to him any self-respecting spy would be wearing gloves, but he decided that if Pollock had wanted his boys to fingerprint the desk they would have done it already. And the detective had let him loose in the room earlier in the day – his prints would prove nothing now. Anyway, they had no way of accessing any database outside of Alice Springs.
He pulled open drawers, searching for anything that might give him a handle on Father Paulson’s activities. They contained little other than pens and stationery. No doubt Daisy or Favaloro had already removed anything that might be deemed controversial.
He started making a mental checklist of what they knew… Paulson travelled regularly, had longstanding connections in the Vatican. He had a wife. And, according to Charlotte, he hired local Indigenous people.
For what?
Luckman found an A4 notepad in the bottom drawer of the desk. There was nothing written on it, but he could see the imprint of handwriting from a page that must have been torn from the pad. He grabbed a pencil and shaded over the paper. It was a name – written over and over again.
John Cutler.
He realised the office had no filing cabinet of any description and there was nothing on the shelves to indicate accounting or bookkeeping records of any sort. Everyone had a telltale paper trail. Paulson’s was notably absent. Where was his passport, his bank records, his bills and other correspondence?
Favaloro had specifically said to look here. There must be a safe. How had he put it? A key at the back door and another key in the study. But even if he found a key there was nothing to unlock.