One book was different from all the others. It was a facsimile of a ledger simply titled Fatal Book 1897. You’re a wack job, Beechnut, I said to myself.
On another shelf were neatly filed green notebooks. These were crammed cover to cover with the handwritten minutes of the Scarborough Tram Society. Each meeting was run by the president of the society, A. Beechnut. Each resolution was seconded by A. Beechnut. The minutes were recorded by A. Beechnut. Guest lectures were delivered by special guest and world tram authority, A. Beechnut. I had a sickening feeling the Scarborough Tram Society had a membership of one.
Beside this bookshelf on the wall was a black and white photograph of a street scene. It showed a small crowd with one man holding up a hand-drawn sign — ‘Scrap the Jones Administration, Not the Trams’. And in front of this man was a small boy with very large, shell-like ears waving to the camera. The picture was dated 13.4.69.
Jones. Jones? Clem Jones? Could it be the same Clem the Clem7 tunnel was named after? The tunnel in whose vent my dear friend Father Dill was found in six pieces?
I stood over Beechnut’s large desk and riffled through stacks of paper. Here were more tram-route maps. But halfway through the pile were detailed drawings and maps of the Clem7 tunnel. There were complicated engineering drafts, cross-section diagrams, geological surveys. And underneath them were documents relating to the Brisbane City Hall — maps, old architectural plans, plumbing and electrical data, drawings of foundations, doorways, ladders, stairwells, hatches. There was a business card stapled to some of the paperwork. It belonged to a council engineer, a Mr Barrie Barry. I issued a double burp into the swine-flu mask, an accidental homage to the twin-named council worker.
Beneath the desk, next to several cans of red paving paint, I found a small cairn of books that were the property of the Redcliffe City Library. They were all about one person. Mary MacKillop, the primary candidate to become Australia’s first saint.
I stood in the centre of the room, turned off the torch and had a quiet think.
I recalled a conversation I had had with my police friend at Roma Street about the murder of Father Dill.
‘How did his body get into the Gibbon Street shaft?’ I had asked.
‘We don’t know,’ the officer said.
‘Is it freely accessible? To the public?’
‘No.’
‘You’d need special access?’
‘Correct.’
‘When will the tunnel be finished?’
‘First half of 2010.’
‘Could it have been a tunnel worker? With access to the shaft?’ I went on, thinking out loud.
‘It could have been.’
‘What was Dill doing in that part of Brisbane anyway, when he lived on the coast?’
‘He’s either been murdered somewhere on the Gold Coast and his body cut up and transported to South Brisbane, or he’s made his way to Brisbane — perhaps he was lured — and murdered somewhere in the city and his body dumped at the vent. He didn’t have a car.’
‘But why the vent? South Brisbane?’
‘The body was stacked, not dumped. It was a sign. A symbol of something, the way the body was presented for discovery. The tunnel, or the area, meant something to the killer. He or she is telling us something.’
‘He or she is telling us he or she is out of his or her frackin’ mind,’ I said.
In Beechnut’s dark living room I tried to establish a case narrative. Dillon’s old parish was South Brisbane. He’d been dumped and ushered out after years of service there. And he ends up an anatomical display. Back in South Brisbane. O beloved Mary. Sweet Mary. Give me strength, Father Dill had said to me.
‘Come on, Dill, throw us a miracle here. A bit of divine intervention,’ I said quietly to myself, my olfactories longing for some fresh air inside the swine mask.
I turned the torch back on and started to make my way out.
The torchlight caught on a tiny picture frame at the end of the room. I clambered around an old slatted tram seat and had a closer look. In the centre of the cheap frame was a small yellow rectangle.
I whistled through my mask. I pulled out the little cardboard ticket I’d found in Dill’s confessional, and held it up beside the one under glass.
‘Thanks, comrade,’ I said.
Then the back door creaked open.
~ * ~
6
IT WAS NICE to see my Jack again. He was sitting quietly in the chair beside my hospital bed when I regained consciousness.
‘Hello, son,’ I said.
‘Hello, Dad.’
‘Fancy seeing you here,’ I said.
‘And fancy seeing you here,’ he said.
‘Where am I?’ I asked.
‘Hospital, Dad,’ he said.
‘Been here long, have I?’ I asked.
‘Day and a half, Dad,’ he said.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ I said. ‘Any idea why I’m here, son?’
‘Yes, Dad,’ he said. ‘You were found naked and unconscious in the back of your Kombi down at Redcliffe.’
‘Is that so?’ I asked.
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘Naked, you say?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
I ran my hand through my hair and felt yet another half-grapefruit on the back of my head. I ached from tip to toe. It started to come back to me. Trains. No, trams. Smell. A bad smell. Rats. A picture. No, a little rectangular ticket. Alwin Beernut? Alvin Barebutt? Yes! Alan Beechnut! The rogue, the swine, the dirty little street-scrapper.
‘Been well, son?’
‘Yes, Dad.’
‘What you doing there, son?’ My boy was hunched over his mobile phone, tapping away with both thumbs.
‘Tweeting, Dad.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said. I could hear the gadget clicking. ‘Tweeting. What is that? Some sort of young people’s code for something?’
‘It’s social networking, Dad. Twitter. You send tweets to your friends and they send tweets back. ‘
‘Nothing to do with birds?’
‘No, Dad.’
For a moment I was back in the room at Beechnut’s filth palace in Scarborough. I’d heard the back door creak open. I’d frozen. I’d thought of hiding in the sawn-off tram chassis. Then again, he might want to play driver and toot-toots, and there was no way the two of us would have fitted in there. I’d thought I might dash out the front door, but I didn’t know where it was in that jumbled shrine to public transport. I’d clicked off the torch and waited. I’d blind him with the Maglite and push through the kitchen and out. I’d zap him and flee. He had turned on the kitchen light and I could see his long shadow spilling into the tram room. He’d walked slowly across the linoleum. The shadow had grown. Then he was in the doorway.