I’d arrived early for our meeting. I’d wandered the halls of City Hall. I’d never been inside. Impressive. Lots of deco curves. Veined marble. Stately columns. Hard to believe the place was sinking into the earth.
I struck up a conversation with an old boy in the Museum of Brisbane.
‘Terribly sad, terribly sad,’ he said of the crumbling icon. ‘I enlisted here as a young man. Double-you, double-you two. Down in the Red Cross rooms. Terribly sad. Terribly sad.’
He kept repeating things. It gave his conversation a powerful bedrock, which is more than I could say for the terribly sad City Hall.
‘How come she’s going under?’ I asked.
‘Built on a swamp. A swamp. Was a swamp from day one and no matter what you put over the top of a swamp, she stays a swamp.’
‘That so?’
‘Oh yes. Oh yes. A swamp’s a swamp.’
‘Then why did they build it here?’
‘Because the council owned the land. Owned the land.’
‘Simple as that?’
‘Argh, yes. Yes.’
I saw a slender figure approach me through the heat haze. It was Barrie Barry. Strange. I was having a day of repetitions.
‘You’re Barry? Barrie?’
He nodded, flicked his head, and walked straight past me towards Ann Street. I followed. We didn’t speak until we’d taken up a seat on the grass in the Roma Street Parkland. Barrie Bany was twitching and checking over his shoulder, a veritable bundle of tics and tweaks. He had a bald pate that was very shiny. Too long in King George Square and he’d be in an emergency neurology unit. I had a very silly urge to ask him if his middle name was Barrey.
‘How did you find me?’ Barrie whispered.
‘Well, Barry — or is it Barrie? I came upon you via a rather circuitous route involving a tram fanatic with stupendous halitosis and the death of a very good friend, a man of the cloth. I have a hunch you met him too.’
‘Father Dillon.’
‘Father Dillon.’
‘And Beechnut,’ Barrie Barrey Barry said.
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘He came to me, Beechnut, interested in the restoration work at the City Hall. He said he was from some transport group.’
‘The Scarborough Tram Society,’ I nodded.
‘Yes. He seemed ... well ... we have, at council, the occasional difficulties with public-transport fanatics. They can become ... difficult. Any road change, bus route alteration, even modifications to ticketing systems, even the tickets themselves — they have an opinion.’
‘Each to his own, I suppose,’ I said flippantly.
‘Well, we can’t afford to be cavalier, I’m afraid. Things can get ... beyond our control. We have to be extremely diplomatic. Every change creates a reaction to some degree. Confidentially, take the tunnel projects. We’ve had fires. Burning effigies of the mayor down below. Wiring cut. Someone doesn’t want the tunnels in Brisbane. Someone wants the tram back. How do these things happen, with security and twenty-four-hour work shifts? It’s beyond me. Then again, so is dedicating one’s life to a tram.’
‘You suspect Beechnut?’
‘He is on our list.’
‘Then there’s Father Dillon.’
‘You were close?’ the councilman asked. He was checking me out, testing my authenticity. I told him stories he’d probably never heard about Dill. I told him I had accidentally met him, after many lost years, in the confessional booth. I told him I had been on the brink of re-examining my faith when all this happened. Barrie Barry had tears in his eyes.
‘Father Dillon was a good man,’ he said. ‘He was my parish priest for years. I was over at Gibbon Street one day when a tunnel worker who I knew from church took me aside and gave me the tin box. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know what to do.’
Then Barrie Barry started to cry. Not loudly. Just small, short, stabbing sobs into the hands he’d rested his face in. I patted him softly on the back.
He recovered himself.
‘They’d found it in the early stages of digging the ventilation shaft. Surprisingly well preserved. The worker told me to keep it safe. That it contained something powerful enough to enable the tunnel naysayers to call a halt to the project, or at least delay it for a substantial period of time.’
‘What was inside?’
He didn’t hear me. He was off and away with his monologue — an unpunctuated, sincere confession, which he had to get out in one hit.
‘I panicked,’ continued Barrie Barry. ‘I didn’t know what to do. I brought it to Father Dillon. He hid it. He told me where he’d put it. But word was getting around. That something had been retrieved from the soil at Gibbon Street. Something big enough and profound enough to halt the tunnels. It would gain the attention of the entire country. Maybe the world. Then, when Father Dill was ... was murdered ... I went and got the box. I knew where he’d put it. I knew it was important. I knew what I had to do. I couldn’t let it get into the wrong hands. It was a question of faith ... O God. ‘
He broke down again.
We were attracting some attention in the gardens with all his sobbing. I had the distinct feeling we were being watched.
He calmed down again, and went on. ‘I figured if I could secure it safely until the tunnels were finished, then we could reveal it to the world. It would be too late for them to use the box for their own selfish reasons. I have been threatened. I am afraid for my life. I am just a humble council engineer —’
I grabbed his shoulder before he could cry once more.
‘Barrie. Barry. I need you to listen to me very carefully or I can’t help you. What is in the box, and where is it?’
I heard the City Hall clock dong away in the near-distance. It was midday. Between the twelve dongs Barrie Barry told me about the miracle of Gibbon Street. He told me where he’d stashed the box. He told me if I met him at his office later that evening he would take me to it and show me the contents. He walked back alone to the skillet.
My mobile rang. It was Jack.
‘Hello, son.’
‘Hello, Dad.’
‘What’s new?’
‘I need you to get on to Twitter, Dad.’
‘Why is that, son?’
‘Because your friend is driving me nuts with the cryptic quotes.’
‘For whom the bell tolls? What’s the latest?’
“‘Nice spot on the grass with your little bald friend.’”
‘No, no, son. What’s the latest twitch?’