The Outback (21 page)

‘What about it?’ asked
Matt.

‘Who’s that sitting
third from the left in the front row?’

Matt squinted as he
perused the image.

‘It can’t be,’ he said.

‘It is,’ replied Colin.
‘It says R Butler underneath and look at who is sitting beside him.’

Matt scanned through the
names until he found Rhett’s. Beside it was the name J Warwick.

‘That’s the man who was
murdered,’ he said.

‘And he knew Rhett,’
added Colin. ‘I told you that we would find a connection.’

As they talked, they
were approached from behind by the librarian who had come to investigate after
the earlier disturbance when Colin had slammed his chair.

‘Is there a problem,
gentlemen?’ she asked.

‘No problem,’ said
Colin. ‘We were just looking at the photographs, that’s all.’

The librarian was
wearing reading glasses that were attached to a cord around her neck. She
removed these, which left them hanging over her chest like a necklace.

‘You two boys are from
the caravan park, aren’t you?’ she asked.

They briefly looked at
one another.

‘Yes, we are,’ replied
Colin. ‘I take it that you have heard about the recent tragedies.’

The librarian nodded
gravely, but sympathetically.

‘The whole town is in
mourning,’ she replied. ‘My prayers are with the girl and that poor boy’s
family.’

Matt was only half
interested in the conversation as he was ready to leave, but his friend had
other ideas.

‘Have you always lived
in Birribandi?’ Colin asked the woman.

‘Yes,’ she replied,
‘ever since I was a little girl.’

Colin nodded in what he
hoped was a thoughtful way.

‘You must remember the
first time that crimes such as these happened,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t that thirty
years ago now?’

‘Yes, it was,’ she
confirmed. ‘I had two young children at the time. You just don’t expect such
horrific acts to take place on your own doorstep.’

Again Colin nodded.

‘Did you know any of the
people involved?’ he asked.

‘Did I know them?’ she
echoed. ‘In a town like this there are no strangers. Especially thirty years
ago.’

The librarian looked
past Colin to the framed photograph.

‘Are you interested in
local history?’ she asked him.

Colin tried to muster as
much enthusiasm as he could.

‘If it’s to do with
sport, I am. I take it that this team were quite successful?’

The librarian’s face
seemed to drop a little as if suddenly reminded of an even greater tragedy than
the one that they were discussing.

‘They could have been,’
she said. ‘It’s funny that you ask, because the same man who was murdered all
those years ago played for that very team.’ She pointed to John Warwick in the
picture. ‘They made it all the way to the state final. One of the players was
even being courted by some of the professional clubs from the national league.’

‘It wasn’t the one who
was murdered, was it?’ asked Colin, who was trying his best to keep the
conversation going.

‘No, it wasn’t John,’
she replied. ‘It was this man here.’ She pointed to Rhett. ‘His name is Rhett
Butler, like the character from
Gone with the Wind
. And like his
namesake, he was also a hit with the ladies.’

The two backpackers
glanced at one another. This time they were more amused than surprised. They
each made a conscious effort to suppress the urge to giggle.

‘What happened to him?’
asked Colin.

The librarian looked up
into the corner of her eye as she retrieved the requisite memory.

‘Drink and drugs soon
put an end to his career,’ she said, rather sternly. ‘After the murder
investigation the big teams cooled their interest in him and he turned to the
bottle.’

‘He was involved?’ asked
Colin, innocently.

‘He was,’ she confirmed.
‘The girl did not name John as her attacker until after she had killed him.’

‘I don’t understand,’
said Matt. ‘How does Rhett fit into this?’

‘Well, like I said; the
girl was late coming forward about the attack. It was actually her parents who
reported it, but she refused to say anything herself. Witnesses confirmed that
on the night of the alleged assault she had gone home with the two boys in
question. They were roommates, you see; so the police interviewed both of
them.’

‘So it could have been
Rhett?’ asked Colin.

‘No,’ she replied
flatly, ‘just days after the assault, she stabbed John to death at his home and
told the police that he had been the one who attacked her. Rhett was cleared of
any blame, but the scandal affected his performance in the cup final. After
blowing his one chance at the big time, he fell apart. He eventually progressed
from alcohol to the stronger stuff and then just last week he died behind the
wheel of his car whilst drunk. You must have heard about it.’

Colin and Matt both
nodded, but said nothing more. They assumed that the woman had no knowledge of
Rhett working for Joe and did not want to arouse her suspicions by telling her.

‘What about the girl?’
Colin asked. ‘Is she still in prison?’

‘Oh, she didn’t go to
prison,’ said the librarian. ‘She pleaded insanity and was instead sent to the
psychiatric hospital at Cooper’s Creek. As far as I know, she’s still there.’

‘Fascinating,’ said
Colin. ‘Just out of interest; what was her name?’

‘Naomi Green,’ replied
the librarian.

Colin again performed
his pseudo intellectual nod for the woman’s benefit.

‘It’s been very
interesting talking with you,’ he said, ‘but it is time that we got back to the
park.’

‘Well, don’t let me keep
you,’ she said. ‘Hopefully, I’ll see you both again sometime.’

They thanked her for her
time and then left to return to the park. Colin was very animated on the walk
back.

‘Did you hear what she
said?’ he asked. ‘The killer is at the hospital in Cooper’s Creek. The
psychiatric ward is to the rear of the main building; I passed a sign for it
when I had my x-ray.’

‘So she’s at Cooper’s
Creek,’ replied Matt. ‘That means we can safely rule her out as Pierro’s
killer.’

‘Don’t you see?’ said
Colin. ‘Cooper’s Creek is where Celeste is. Do you think that this Naomi Green
is still there?’

Matt could guess where
his friend was leading him and he did not approve.

‘You aren’t seriously
suggesting that we pay her a visit, are you?’

‘Why not? It couldn’t do
any harm and we may even find out what part Rhett had to play in the crimes.’

‘This is crazy. I’m not
going to quiz a patient in a mental home about a rape that took place thirty
years ago. Besides which, we can probably guess how it happened. The pair will
have taken the girl back to their house and whilst Rhett slept in his bed, his
friend assaulted her on the couch. Then she goes crazy and stabs him for it;
end of story.’

Colin was not interested
in random speculation when he could get the true story directly from the
source.

‘I’m sure if we tell Joe
that we want to go and visit Celeste, he will take us. Once we are there, we
just need to slip away for a few moments as the psychiatric wing is just next
door.’

‘I have a bad feeling
about this,’ said Matt, but he reluctantly agreed to the plan.

Deep down the Englishman
knew that his friend would get into much more trouble if he was not with him.

Chapter 30

Niall and Jonas insisted
on accompanying the two men on their visit to see their hospitalized colleague.
They left early on the Thursday morning with Joe giving them all a lift to
Cooper’s Creek. The Englishman agreed only after imposing several strict rules
regarding what the men could and could not tell the injured girl. He wanted to
make sure that Celeste was spared further trauma unless absolutely necessary.
Naturally, this meant that both Stephen and Pierro were taboo subjects.

‘She is going to be
suspicious as to why Stephen isn’t with us,’ said Niall.

‘Tell her that he is ill
and confined to his bed,’ Joe told him. ‘The same goes for Pierro. The doctor’s
have made it clear that they do not want her receiving any more shocks until
she has regained some of her strength.’

When they arrived at the
hospital car park, Joe told the four backpackers that he had several errands of
his own to attend to and arranged to meet them back at the car for two o’clock.
This, he explained, would give them ample time to visit the girl and then grab
a more substantial lunch than the processed cheese sandwiches that they had
grown accustomed to. Once they were past the front entrance and Joe was out of
sight, Colin took the opportunity to make his excuses.

‘We’ll catch up with you
guys in a moment,’ he told Niall and Jonas. ‘We have something else that we
need to attend to first.’

‘What else could you
possibly need to do here?’ asked Niall.

‘The doctors want to do
some follow up checks on my x-ray,’ replied Colin. ‘It shouldn’t take too long
and Matt is coming with me so that we can still see Celeste together.’

The lie was obvious, but
Colin had told it with such casual ease that it was not questioned. He and Matt
slipped away from their comrades and followed the signs to the psychiatric
ward, which was located in the southern wing of the hospital.

‘Do you have any idea
what you are going to say to her; assuming of course that she is even here?’
asked Matt. ‘Thirty years is a long time, you know.’

‘Don’t worry; I have it
all under control,’ insisted the Irishman.

Matt thought back to the
first time that Colin had asked for his trust. Back then he had been completely
lost amidst the sand and spinifex of the desert and considered himself
fortunate to have found the company of one so experienced and worldly wise. Now
he wondered if his friend was nothing but a fantasist, who was always at home
within his own thoughts, but had no real grasp of the wider world around him.
Here they were, chasing the shadow of a dead man, whilst there was a cold
blooded killer on the loose. Should the unthinkable happen, Matt wondered if
Colin would really be someone to whom he could trust his life.

‘This is it,’ said the
Irishman, as they came to the desired wing. ‘Let me do the talking.’

A large lady in her late
forties to early fifties staffed the reception. She was seated at a desk
covered by a large Perspex shield and a heftily built security guard stood
sentinel by her station. This was not quite how either of the visitors had
expected minimum security to be. Colin stepped up to the desk. The receptionist
ignored him, keeping her attention on the computer screen in front of her. He
coughed. She glanced first towards the security guard and then sighed before
finally asking ‘can I take your name, please?’

‘Colin,’ he simply answered,
not wishing to give his full identity away.

‘Colin, eh; would there
happen to be any more to that?’

He considered lying, but
then thought better of it.

‘Colin O’Meara,’ he
said.

She picked up a
clipboard and briefly scanned the information that it held.

‘You’re not on the list.
Do you have an appointment?’

She used the mouse to
open up a new window on her desktop and then began typing.

‘I didn’t know that we
needed an appointment. The sign said that visiting hours were between ten and
twelve and I assumed that we could just turn up.’

She paused with her
fingers hovering over the keys and looked up at him without moving her head.

‘Have you ever been here
before?’ she asked.

‘Er, no I haven’t. This
is my first time.’

Matt was cringing behind
his friend and doing his best to look invisible. It was not working as the
woman looked first to him and then back to Colin.

‘In the best interests
of the residents, we prefer for visitors to make an appointment in advance,’
she said. ‘This is so as not to cause any undue surprises that could unsettle
or distress those residents.’

Colin was visibly lost
for words. The receptionist let out another sigh.

‘Who are you here to
see?’ she asked.

‘Miss Naomi Green.’

‘Ms Green? Wait here,
please.’

The receptionist’s
surprised reaction suggested to the boys that she had not been expecting a
request to see that particular patient. She rose from her seat and exited via a
door, which was located just behind her desk. She was not gone long before she
returned accompanied by a nurse.

‘How can I be of
assistance?’ the nurse asked.

‘Like I said to the
receptionist here, we want to see Naomi Green, please.’

The nurse looked
confused and when Matt glanced down at her name badge he realised why.

‘You’re Naomi Green?’ he
asked.

‘Yes, that’s me. I must
say that you two boys are acting most oddly. Exactly what can I do for you?’

‘We’re from Birribandi,’
said Matt.

‘I should have guessed.
Your accent is such a giveaway.’

She had such a warm and
relaxed demeanour that her sarcasm seemed more of an invitation than a rebuke.

‘We’re backpackers
working the harvest trail,’ added Colin. ‘Up until last week we were working
under a man named Rhett Butler.’

***

Hiro was lain belly down
on his bed sketching when he heard a knock at the door. He had been sketching a
lot lately. The desert offered little stimulus and his fellow backpackers even
less. Recently, however, he felt inspired and spent every waking hour working
on his drawings. He put down his pencil before rising to answer the door.

‘Hi, we thought that you
may like some company.’

It was the two English
girls. If he concentrated, he could understand these two quite well. He glanced
back at his journal, which lay open on the bed and then back to the girls.

‘We go outside?’ he
offered. ‘Is sunny day.’

The pair exchanged a
look of amusement, but did not pass comment. They had decided that it was time
that they both got to know their Asian colleague a bit better. It was not fair
on the Japanese man that he should have to spend his time on the peripherals of
the group simply because he was not as well versed in the English language as
everybody else. Hiro, they thought, had remained an enigma for far too long.

***

The hospital had a small
cafeteria for use by visitors and that is where Matt and Colin took up seats
with freshly poured cups of coffee in front of them. Joining them at their
table was Naomi Green. One time resident and now a nurse at the hospital; there
were many questions that the pair hoped she would be able to answer. She was
just one year younger than Rhett, but she could have passed for his daughter.
In spite of her troubled past, the years had been kind. Her blonde locks were
yet to give way to the greying of age and she still had a trim, healthy figure.

‘I knew when I read the
article in the paper that there would be people keen to hear my story again. I
thought that they would be reporters or maybe even the police. I never expected
a pair of backpackers.’

‘Do you mind speaking to
us, because we could leave if you would prefer,’ offered Matt.

The Englishman was still
uneasy with putting a complete stranger on the spot in this way and hoped that
she would pull the plug then and there to end Colin’s morbid quest before it
had the chance to get out of hand.

‘Not at all,’ she
replied. ‘I have had thirty years to come to terms with what happened to me.
Three of those years I spent as a patient in this very hospital and when I left,
I trained as a nurse so that I was able to come back.’

‘Is that allowed?’ asked
Colin, receiving a disapproving glance from Matt in return.

‘My record was expunged.
Suffice to say, mistakes were made around that time. I was suffering from post
traumatic stress, but I was far from crazy. The killing was an accident and the
charges were deleted from the records.’

Colin raised his cup to
take a sip, but the liquid was still scalding hot and burned the tip of his
tongue. He quickly returned it to the tabletop.

‘What made you want to
come back here then?’ he asked.

‘The one thing that
human suffering teaches us is the importance of hope. By returning, I am able
to pass on that hope to others.’

‘Are you aware of a
patient named Celeste? She’s a Canadian girl that was admitted recently. Given
the nature of her injuries, she is likely to require some psychiatric support as
well as medical.’

The nurse raised her cup
and delicately blew on it before taking a sip. Both Colin and Matt were keenly
analysing her every move, hoping to garner as much information as possible from
her body language. Thus far, she had given nothing away.

‘For reasons of
confidentiality, I cannot discuss details of any of the patients here, but I am
aware of the young lady in question. I am guessing that you worked with her in
Birribandi.’

‘That’s right,’ said
Colin. ‘And so did Rhett.’

Matt gave another
disapproving look to his friend, whom he thought was perilously close to
overstepping the mark, but the Irishman carried on undeterred.

‘We understand that our
late foreman was with you the night that you were assaulted,’ he said. ‘He was
even questioned by the police, I believe.’

‘What’s your point?’ the
nurse asked, calmly.

‘Having worked alongside
the man, I could easily believe that he was capable of assaulting a woman. Just
before he died he even threatened to do just that to our Canadian friend and we
all know what happened to her.’

‘You think that Rhett
had something to do with the attack on your friend?’ she asked. ‘I thought that
the assault took place after he died.’

Colin took another sip
from his mug, which had now cooled to a more palatable level.

‘That’s right,’ he
confirmed. ‘Rhett was already dead, but the attack could have been carried out
by a friend or an associate of his. It’s happened before.’

The nurse ignored
Colin’s backhanded comment.

‘So what exactly are you
hoping to gain from speaking to me?’ she asked.

‘I want to find out the
extent of Rhett’s involvement in your attack. He was with both you and the
other man that night. Did he play a part in the assault?’

The nurse took a deep
and prolonged breath.

‘I suppose that now he
is dead, I can finally tell the truth,’ she said. ‘Rhett was involved in both
the assault and the...’ she faltered briefly, ‘...and the events that
followed.’

Matt shifted awkwardly
in his seat, but Colin remained calm and focused. The revelation did not surprise
him as it merely confirmed his suspicions. He never had any doubt that the old
man was capable of murder.

‘Why didn’t you bring
any charges against him?’ the Irishman asked.

She pushed her cup away
from her as if she no longer had a thirst for it.

‘Enough suffering had
gone on. A man died because of what happened that night. I was in a position to
end it and that is what I did. There was no way that I could have endured a
lengthy court case. To have been made to dredge up the sordid details of that night
on a witness stand in front of all of those people would have been too much to
bear. Especially at so young an age, I simply could not have done it.’

‘So Rhett did rape you?’

Matt coughed under his
breath. He did not agree with the forthrightness of Colin’s choice of words and
he was showing it. Their interviewee, however, was still comfortably at ease
with the tone of the questions.

‘Both men had an equal
measure of the crime that was committed that night. Like I said earlier; one of
them lost his life because of it. I did not want any more suffering to take
place.’

‘What about your
suffering, surely you would have been better off seeing him brought to
justice?’

‘I couldn’t.’ She paused
briefly and swallowed heavily. For the first time cracks were starting to
appear in her confident visage. ‘After all that had happened, coming to this
place was the best thing for me. I made a deal with the state prosecutors and
by pleading insanity they spared me the stress and indignation of a lengthy
trial.’