Amongst the Dead (29 page)

‘I want,’ he said impassively, ‘all these little bastards lined up in neat rows, and I want them all put back together again. Humpty dumpty.’

He leaned down, chose a tail and a head, and pushed them together.

‘Like that, see?’

‘Why?’

The question made him start, and his face became contorted as if something very hot had been shoved up his arse.

‘Because I fucking say so!’

His voice was loud enough to turn heads on the opposite side of the compound. By now I was experiencing my own little rush of blood, and was determined to win back some of the sense of worth that I’d squandered in saluting this Neanderthal.

‘This isn’t work. It’s meaningless. It’s demeaning.’

The punch to my solar plexus ended the discussion. I was dragged by the scruff of the prison shirt to one of the three solitary-confinement huts. They were small, solidly built boxes of corrugated iron that stood side by side, prominently placed so as to remind inmates where transgression might lead. One of them was occupied, as evidenced by the banging and obscenities that issued from it. It seemed that the silence rule didn’t apply to solitary, although it was probably a measure of the success of a stint in one of these boxes when the prisoner fell silent through exhaustion and acquiescence.

That I could be condemned to this punishment without paperwork or recourse to appeal was devastating proof that Brocks Creek was a world unto itself, housing prisoners-of-war — prisoners who’d waged war on their own country. They were despised, and the niceties of laws and conventions were not to be lavished on them. However, the fact that I was temporarily and unjustly amongst them didn’t arouse in me any sense of fraternity. I was ‘me’; they remained resolutely ‘them’. For a fleeting moment, the prospect of solitary confinement, while it had been perfidiously imposed, seemed almost desirable. At least it would separate me from the others.

I was ordered to strip, and was shoved into the box. In the brief moment before the door was closed, I saw that the only thing to sit on was the dunny can in the corner. When the door was shut it was almost as if I’d been struck blind — not the faintest glimmer of light seeped through from outside. The cells had looked flimsy, but they’d been built with care and clearly adhered to strict specifications for deprivation. I stood stock still: like Milton, light denied; but, unlike Milton, in no mood to fondly ask if God exacted day-labour, despite the inconvenience of blindness. I tried desperately to quell the rising flood of claustrophobia. It was the foul smell from the dunny can that rescued me. Somehow its putrid odours created enough of a sense of space to alleviate my fear. I can’t explain why this was the case, but the nausea it induced became more physically urgent than the psychological compulsion of the phobia.

The box wasn’t quite soundproof, and I could hear the muffled howling of the other prisoner. I wondered how long it would take for this experience to reduce a man to that state, and how long it would take beyond that to reduce him to silence.

I crouched onto my haunches and, having felt about on the ground for any impediment to doing so, I sat cross-legged. All right, I thought, if I keep very still, and breathe evenly, I might enter a trance-like state. But the smell made breathing evenly impossible. I became aware that I was sweating, that I was unbearably hot, and that I was thirsty. I became aware, too, of small, scuttling sounds nearby.

What was in here with me? Scorpions? Rats? Cockroaches? Centipedes? Achieving anything approaching a trance was now so remote as to be unattainable. In my fevered imagination, scorpions, cockroaches, and centipedes assumed the size of rodents. The thought of them moving about me — sentient, malicious, and patiently poised to exploit whatever it was my body offered that could satisfy their primitive needs — was unbearable. If there’d been arthropods in the Garden of Eden, that would explain why Adam and Eve got out of there.

I think I’d been confined for perhaps half an hour when the first urge to scream a demand for release hit me. I quashed it. My thirst was building, and to the panic about scorpion attack I added a panic about the effects of dehydration on the body and the mind. My breathing became rapid and, as if to further disrupt any potential for inward calm, I began to wonder how air could get in if light couldn’t. This was when it occurred to me that I might suffocate in there, and it was also when the insanity of claustrophobia drove me to throw myself against the immovable and unforgiving wall. I didn’t cry out, but threw myself again and again at the great, black solidity of the wall, uttering small, pathetic, whimpering sounds. For the first time in my life, a claustrophobic attack ran its full course uninterrupted by rescue. At some point I collapsed, my shoulders bleeding, my energy exhausted. I’d always thought that I’d die if I was ever in a situation where the phobia ran unchecked. But I hadn’t died and, in a bizarre reversal of my emotional state, I felt a tiny surge of something like pleasure.

My thirst was raging, and now it was this more than any other discomfort that made solitary confinement intolerable. I tried not to focus on it by running through the poetry that was in my head, and this was quite effective until I inadvertently embarked upon ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’, a poem I’d proudly committed to memory in school (a feat that had won me a copy of the complete plays of William Shakespeare, and changed the direction of my life). I stumbled at

Water, water everywhere

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere

Nor any drop to drink,

but ploughed on. Just three stanzas later, I truly regretted having begun:

And every tongue, through utter drought,

Was withered at the root;

We could not speak, no more than if

We had been choked with soot.’

Having entered fully into the world of the mariner, I felt my thirst more keenly than ever.

Looking back on it, it now seems odd that I should have found even the first few hours of solitary confinement so difficult to endure. I’d been thirsty, hot, and uncomfortable for most of my time in the Northern Territory. In solitary, however, the darkness exaggerated all sensation. Apart from the potent relief of having survived an attack of claustrophobia, all other sensations were horrible, horrible, most horrible.

My thirst was mercifully alleviated when the door was thrown open and a billy of water passed to me. I didn’t see who’d delivered it, because the sudden light did such violence to my eyes that I had to turn away and protect them with the crook of my arm. The water tasted of tea and rust, but it was ambrosia to me. Although I ought to have sipped it and made it last, I drank it almost at a single gulp. There must have been a pint of it, so it successfully slaked my thirst. It gave me the luxury of being able to consider the stinging pain that was radiating from each of my shoulders, and I touched them gently. My fingers encountered sticky blood, and my thoughts immediately turned to infection. I knew that that way madness lay, so I attempted to gather the events of the last few weeks into a coherent shape.

It had been seven weeks since Brian and I had met with James and Nigella Fowler at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne. Intelligence would, no doubt, be pleased that the person who’d murdered five Nackeroos was now himself dead. Any hope of discovering his motive was lost, unless analysis of his relationship with each of the dead men turned up something. I suspected that Army Intelligence would have more pressing matters to worry about than the psychology of a lunatic. They’d be happy enough to consign the incident to history — a history that would never be written. It was an unsatisfactory conclusion, I thought. Knowing ‘who’ was all very well; knowing ‘why’ was the heart of the matter. Army Intelligence would most likely require that I stop digging about for motive, on the basis that settled dust was best left undisturbed.

Hours passed, rain fell, I was given bread (the open door revealing night) and another pint of water, and I managed a fitful sleep. Something crawled over my foot, and I let it, fearing that any sudden movement would excite it to strike. At some point, deep into the night, I wondered miserably how it was that I’d come to this. I was confident that I’d be exonerated and liberated — I had no expectation of an apology — but a bout of self-pity left me feeling most sorely hard-done by. I could draw the arc of events that had led me there, and I could see the awful logic at work, but at every point my trajectory had been fuelled by the incompetence and blindness of others. Even a man as clever as Archie Warmington had failed to comprehend facts that were self-evident. Fairly or not, I blamed him — and his determination that Rufus Farrell’s accusations be given equal weight with my own — for placing me in the vulnerable position in which I now found myself.

When I thought of Archie and the last conversation I’d had with him, I thought, too, of the recent interrogation in Katherine. There’d been something very peculiar about it. The peculiarity might have been a consequence of their belief that they were dealing with a strange kind of sadist, but there was something else. It was their reaction to my mentioning the three deaths that had occurred before Battell’s and Ashe’s. They’d been perplexed and dismissive, and had thought the comment so unworthy of consideration that they’d moved on to another question, as if my remarks had been the product of a disordered mind rather than a statement of fact. Were they anxious to avoid discussion of the deaths? My memory of the look on each of their faces was strong, and I’d seen no anxiety there — only genuine, fleeting puzzlement. Their statement that Battell and Ashe were the first and only casualties in the whole
NAOU
, let alone in A Company, had been made with the unequivocal confidence that it was the truth.

And, of course, it
was
the truth.

There, in the bleak darkness of solitary confinement, it became brilliantly clear to me that it wouldn’t be possible to hide three deaths from Command, and neither would it be possible to silence all the Nackeroos who must have had knowledge of them. I racked my brains, and couldn’t dredge up even the vaguest hint from anyone that men had been dying in A Company. The claim had been made by James Fowler and Army Intelligence, and by no one else. We’d been sent under false pretences. But why?

All the connections I thought I’d made began to unravel, and I was left with a series of incidents that made no sense at all. Ashe and Battell were dead, and Rufus Farrell had killed them. This fact now floated like wreckage in a sea of confusion. Why had he done it, and why had Intelligence put Brian and me at the scene of both crimes? Was Rufus Farrell working for Intelligence? As soon as I considered this, I knew I’d stumbled on a part of the puzzle. I couldn’t put it anywhere, but at least I had it. It made me feel sick. I must have been turning these thoughts over in my head for hours, because when the door opened unexpectedly it was morning.

‘Good morning, Will,’ said a familiar voice. When I’d adjusted my eyes to the glare, I found I was standing in front of Archie Warmington. He was dapper, neat, and clean. I was naked, bloodied, and filthy, and I stank. I felt at a considerable disadvantage, and the thing I most wanted to do in the world was punch him.

‘You look like shit,’ he said.

Chapter Eleven

the truth about lies

WHEN I’D SHAVED, SHOWERED
,
SALVED
,
AND POWDERED
myself liberally with the luxury of Mennen Talc For Men, and after a halfway-decent meal, I felt slightly more well-disposed towards Archie, who was sitting opposite me in the office where, the day before yesterday, I’d been instructed in the rules. I’d been treated with considerable courtesy since my release from solitary confinement, although there’d been no suggestion that the punishment hadn’t been richly deserved. I decided not to pursue the matter just yet. I’d wait until my release had been finalised, and then I’d lodge an official complaint about the inhuman conditions at Brocks Creek.

‘Only you could get locked up in solitary within a few hours of entering this place,’ Archie said, and an annoying chortle escaped him.

‘I can’t see the humour in it.’

He waved my objection aside.

‘You’ll laugh about it one day.’

This was one of those expressions that always got my back up, and I was disappointed to hear Archie use it.

‘I’ve spoken to the three officers who questioned you in Katherine. I must say they painted a rather disturbing picture of you. They were of the opinion that you’re a necrophiliac, and it took all my powers of persuasion to convince them otherwise — and I’m not sure I managed to fully convince them in the end. They were most reluctant to give up the idea. They really didn’t take to you, Will.’