Drainland (Tunnel Island Book 1) (3 page)

O
n the drive
back from the meeting, Laura Romano passed a dozen bars. She stopped at two without a drink, unable to work out the local currency. At the third, a pub on Point Hallahan, she held up a twenty-dollar note and said, “Please tell me you’ll take my money.”

The barman nodded.

“Whiskey, neat,” she said. “Something halfway decent.”

He took a bottle down from the shelf and said, “On ice?”

“Yeah. Okay, make it a double.”

He took her cash and placed it in a small tin by the register. He placed the change down on the bar beside her.

“New in town?”

“Yeah, and thirsty. Had to dry out for a stretch but…” Romano could feel herself talking fast. She took a breath. “What is this money card thing everyone’s chasing? The Dry?”

“Dree,” said the barman. He took a bronze plastic card from his apron and held it up. “Slang, it means Drinks Card. You’ll need one over here. They sell them everywhere. You can buy anything with one.”

“Can you sell me one?”

“Everywhere but here.”

“What’s the exchange like?”

“Not bad.”

“And everyone has one?”

“Everyone.”

“Okay, then.”

Romano took her drink out to the beer garden. The pub sat on a jutting point of the coast, a stone’s throw from the ocean. It hovered over the island’s gaudy high street, a mess of casinos, hotels, nightclubs and titty bars lighting up the streetscaping as bright as day. They called it The Strip, apparently. She sat there and watched rain piss down into it.

After a time, she took the court orders from her pocket and unfolded them. The AA meeting was weird, weirder than expected. She played it loose, offering the Indian hippie in charge five hundred to sign all the forms at once. He did it but it was no big win. He handed her the money back and said, “Paper doesn’t mean a thing to anyone over here. Don’t come back to the circle until you’re ready.” He looked right at her as he handed back the forms, drawing it out. “Some people are never ready.”

She drank to that and went back to the bar for another. The barmen poured. The pub was almost empty: a woman sweated the nags down one end of the room, a group of middle-aged men sat around a table in the other corner looking on. Most of the men looked pretty rough. A jukebox played. The place smelled like the eighties, like secondhand smoke and motel air-freshener.

Romano leaned across the bar. “Can you sell me a traveller?”

“There’s no rules,” he said.

“Except for the drinks card nonsense.”

“Actually there are rules…but not about booze. What do you want? Do you want it in a bag?”

“Wine. Something dry. And forget the bag.”

S
he took
the bottle back to the hotel. The department sprang for a relocation. She was waiting on the house that came with the job. One of the local boys laid it out on the phone the day previous: “It’s going to be a week or two, because the last guy shot himself and his family still haven’t come across to pick his shit up. It’s been bloody months. We’re about to put it in the trash.”

She’d be meeting this bright spark in the morning.

That was tomorrow’s problem.

Romano poured the wine.

T
urnell Island Police Station
sat in a small residential cluster about five kilometres south of The Strip. Back from the road and sheltered by a hedge of bushland, the suburb was flat and low, like a basin cut into the scrub. At its centre was the station itself. It was unlike any Romano had seen before. The station house comprised a set of old sandstone buildings, all stark windowless things with flat walls like monoliths. From the street, it had a primitive feel to it, like some holdover from the colonies, or a leper hospice. She pushed down a shudder and walked the short stair to the buzzer.

A small intercom speaker crackled.

“It’s open,” said a voice.

She went in. The first room was a dark stone chamber with a high ceiling. A bench topped with a clear Perspex barrier sealed off the far side of the chamber and behind it, sitting under two dim desk lamps, was a pair of uniformed policemen. They had a television on the desk. The light flickered over their faces.

“I’m the new appointment. Laura Romano. Anyone expecting me?”

They stared up at her. One looked taller and softer, with sandy hair and a thick moustache of the same colour. His badge read
Chandler
. The other looked like a squat bodybuilder, arms bulging out of his uniform sleeves. He was
O’Conner
. She remembered that name; O’Conner was the cop from the phone.

The last guy shot himself.

O’Conner spoke first. “Romano? What’s that, Italian?”

“Something like that,” she said.

“The whole house has been anticipating your arrival. The whole service, both of us even, have been real, real excited,” said the other one.

They sat there and smirked.

“That’s ah…You going to let me in or what?”

Chandler sighed. “Step round to your left there.” A door opened into a small antechamber. Chandler pushed out his huge hand, introducing himself as a Senior Constable. “I’ll give you the tour if you want?”

“Lead the way.”

As they passed, Romano stopped at the counter room where the other one still sat.

“I’m Denny,” he said. “Welcome to the end of the line, baby.”

“Thanks.”

Chandler pushed open a wide timber door and they stepped out into a courtyard. A sheltered corridor lined four walls, surrounding a neat green lawn.

“Jeez, it’s still coming down, aye,” said Chandler, putting a hand out to catch the rain. “Been wet lately. Doesn’t usually do this. Where you from?”

“Melbourne.”

“Never liked the place. Too cold,” said Chandler. “Now, see this, this is all us. It’s an old convict goal house. This is where the boys did their exercise back in the day.” He waved a hand across the yard. “Now we’re stuck here.” Chandler continued on around the interior corridor, talking her through the building’s history, its ghosts, the prisoners executed out back, and so on, before moving along to a long building abutting the whole left side of the property. They went in. The interior of the building had been gutted and was lined with case files. “This is where the bodies are buried.”

Romano scanned labels: old homicides, financial investigations, fraud cases, a huge collection of vice records, most of it dating back to the seventies and eighties. Pre-Fitzgerald.

“If we’re talking official duties, this is where Denny and I are supposed to spend most of our time. But keeping this garbage in order, it’s a waste of time.”

“Are they digitising it?”

“Christ, no. No one wants this going anywhere. This is over here so none of that happens.” Chandler took her out to an adjoining building, a small chamber divided by glass partitions into five discrete offices. “This is us,” he said. “Though Denny and I don’t spend much time out here either. That’s you.” He opened the door of one of the offices. She had a desk and a chair. No phone. No computer. Years of dust covered every surface. “Computer’s on order,” he said. “Should be here in a few weeks.”

“Why are you and Denny on counter duty?”

Chandler laughed. “Look around.” He walked down the building and out another door, back into the courtyard. “Now, the holding cells, booking, and evidence are all out there, through that corridor down back, behind us. There’s no one out there at the moment. And over there”—he pointed at the rear of the building that housed the reception—“Actually, you should come and put your head in here. You don’t need to worry about any of these guys, but it’s good to see for yourself.”

Chandler took a thin passage off the courtyard to a closed fire door. Once there, he knocked loudly, then stepped inside. At the front of the room there were two open plan areas: a set of lounges with a widescreen television on one side, a full kitchen on the other. Three uniformed officers, all men, sat at a small kitchen table playing cards.

“Who’s this, then?” said one of the men, more interested in his hand.

“Old Bill’s replacement,” said Chandler.

“Christ,” said one of them. “’bout bloody time.”

A man across from him looked at Romano. “You play bridge?”

“No,” she said.

He turned back to their game.

Chandler started off down the room and she followed. Behind the kitchen was a briefing room lined with desks and chairs. “We have to supply them with a desk, apparently,” said Chandler. “But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a DPU bloke use one. That’s all they do, play cards. They’re all even more pissed off now because Old Bill used take his lunch with them.”

Chandler finished the tour where they started, looking at the drizzle and the courtyard. He took a tin of tobacco from his pocket and started rolling a smoke. Romano offered him one from her pack. He refused.

“So what’s a DPU then?” she said.

“Displaced Person’s Unit. You don’t have one down south? Okay. It used to be on the mainland up here. It’s where they used to send you if you refused a transfer or if they shut something down. Or if you fucked something up. It’s where you went for a few weeks till they found you a new job.”

They put Romano on sick leave. She’d spent months at home, waiting for the phone to ring. “And now the DPU’s here?”

“That’s right. Now it’s just the dead wood. Those blokes aren’t going anywhere. They’re sitting in there till retirement, the poor bastards.” Chandler finished rolling his smoke and lit up. “Not that I have it much better.”

“Is anyone out on patrol?”

He shook his head. “We don’t go out into the jungle unless something big happens.”

“Who’s handling the routine stuff? I thought the drunk tank would be full twenty-four seven.”

“Hotel security and contractors look after most of it. The rest just sorts itself out.”

“Sorts itself…and this is how the other guy ran things?”

Chandler looked over at her. “That’s right. This is how we run things. The mainland doesn’t give a flying fuck about any of it. We don’t exist, as far as they’re concerned. Tunnel Island is its own thing. You, Denny, me, those old diggers inside, Old Bill, we’re just…” He coughed, a hoarse sickly sound in his chest. “Christ, there’s a bug going round. Been on the verge of getting it all winter. What was I saying?”

“The mainland brass.”

“They don’t care. It doesn’t fucking matter to them,” said Chandler as he sucked in another lungful. “It doesn’t. You’re on the other side of the tunnel now. If you haven’t worked that out yet, you soon will. You’ve sorta been put out to pasture. My advice is to find yourself a hobby. That’s it.” He flicked his smoke and started back towards reception. “That’s the tour,” he called back, without breaking stride.

Romano lingered. The rain started to come down harder. She lit a fresh cigarette off the last and waited for something to happen. When it didn’t, she made her way back to her new office and started cleaning.

F
or a week
, Romano didn’t do much more than get her affairs in order. She ordered mail redirection and spoke to a removalist in Melbourne. She picked up the keys to her new house and looked it over: a small whiteboard bungalow in a neighbourhood ten minutes’ drive from the station house. The place was set back two streets from a still water bay. She could see the water from the gate. There were no signs of the previous tenant inside. He hadn’t blasted a hole in the wall topping himself. She could find no new plasterwork or stains in the flooring. In fact, the place was now completely empty.

Romano booked another hotel until her furniture arrived. On Chandler’s advice, she rented a car and drove to the mainland, down through the tunnel under the bay, and visited an IKEA in Brisbane, arranging delivery with one of the few freight companies who came across. By the Friday of her second week, she had most of it squared away. So much so that she planted herself beside Denny at the front desk and watched the midday movie. They were halfway through it when the call came in from the head office.

Denny answered.

He listened and said, “Really? Sure.”

He put the phone down.

“Who was that?” said Chandler, from the room over.

“The big man’s gracing us with his presence tomorrow.”

“What?” Chandler had been sorting the mail. He now appeared at the door with a handful of envelopes. “Why?”

“Wants to meet the new girl,” said Denny.

Romano looked up from the television. “Who are we talking about? Me?”

“You and O’Shea. The regional inspector,” said Denny.

“Is he coming here? He better not be fucking coming here. We better clean up,” said Chandler.

Denny shook his head. He had a tin of beer open and took a sip from it. “I don’t know what O’Shea is doing over here but Senior Constable Romano here is to meet with his team at Sienna Beach, ten-thirty, tomorrow morning.”

“Bloody hell,” said Chandler.

“They said bring your bathers,” said Denny.

Romano looked from Denny to Chandler and back to Denny. “Fuck off,” she said.

“That’s what they said.”

“Don’t listen to him,” said Chandler, going back to his work.

“That’s what they said. If you don’t believe me, call them back. Go on.”

“Don’t do it,” said Chandler.

Romano kept her eyes on him. Denny performed what she assumed was a shrug, though it was hard to tell with his gym shoulders engulfing his neck.

She turned back to the TV.

After a while, Denny said, “I fucking hate Peter Ustinov,” throwing his empty beer can towards the bin. There was a sharp ping of aluminium on the marble as he missed.

Chandler’s voice drifted in. “Pick it up, dickhead.”

O
n Saturday
, the rain slowed. A low ceiling of grey cloud turned the day humid and damp. Romano sat at the picnic table by the beach and cursed the sweat pooling in her uniform. All this despite a complete lack of sun. It made no sense. It was the dead of winter back home. Here, it was as if the heat operated within its own season.

At exactly eleven o'clock, a black SUV wound its way down the short bitumen road to the campground car park. The place was empty. The SUV crawled across the park and came to rest at an angle, across several vacant spaces. A small woman stepped from the SUV. She wore plain clothes and held a leather folder. “Constable Romano?” Her voice fell flat in the morning drizzle.

Romano stood.

The woman turned back to the occupants of the car and spoke with them, then came over. “The Inspector is over here for a quick dip on his way to meetings on the mainland. Did you get our message about dressing for the water?”

“I wear my uniform when I'm at work,” said Romano.

The woman’s eyes widened a little. “Not today. Don't get into this with him.” She glanced back at the SUV. “I packed a spare set of swimmers. I figured you for about a size eight, from your file.”

Romano stared at the woman. Behind her, two men appeared from the SUV: a short stubby thug in a uniform followed by an older man, balding with a beard. He was wrapped in a white terrycloth bathrobe. As they approached, the uniformed one smirked at Romano, but the older man kept to a grim expression, barely acknowledging her. “I’ll see ya out there, Constable,” he said in a thick Irish brogue, and kept walking.

“I’ll get that swimsuit for you,” said the woman.

Romano tried the bathers on in the camp toilets, finding them tight. They had a robe for her as well, a small concession. She did not check the mirror. Instead, she carefully folded her uniform into a pile, placed her holster and sidearm on top, and carried it all down to the beach. The inspector was already out in the surf. She could see him bobbing in the distance. The other two stood watch on the shore. Romano dumped her clothes at their feet—“Don’t touch any of this,” she said—and took off her robe.

Without letting herself hesitate, Romano walked down the sand and into the ocean. The first lick of the winter sea water was brutal and sharp, but after diving under and swimming a while, Romano found herself at a level temperature. O’Shea seemed to expect this. As she came up beside him, he stared out at the dim horizon and said, “It’s not as bad once ya in, is it? Not that you’d be particularly averse to the cold, I figure.”

“No sir,” said Romano. “Is this as cold as it gets?”

He ignored it. “I usually like to swim by myself. I find it clears the mind. But we need to have a talk, you and I. I don't trust ya, ya see, because I don't trust anyone, so that’s why you and I…that’s why we’re sharing this wee moment together, out here. ”

“Well, if—”

“Ah. Now ya just stay right there and listen. Ya got yourself into some strife down south, I hear, and funnily enough, that’s the sort of thing that recommends ya for a job in this shite mess. I can imagine ya have some inkling of where ya are, but I want to take this opportunity to tell ya straight to ya face. Ya in purgatory now. Never mind what anyone else is telling ya. That’s where ya are. Ya young enough still, and if ya keep your eyes open and mouth shut for the next five, ten years maybe, ya might wind up in a nice regional posting or get to keep your pension. But make no mistake, ya don’t want to go tipping the apple cart over here, lassie. I’m ya boss and I'm tellin’ ya to ya face, just keep things as they are.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult, sir.”

“Ya, that may be so. But…ya know, that’s why we have a place like this. Ya
do
know why we have a place like this, don’t ya?”

Romano shook her head.

“To have a fookin’ place like this, that’s why. We don't want to try and change it into something else now.” He swam closer. “Come, look in from here. See, this,” he said and he pointed down to the south of the island. “That’s Arthurton, that’s where the tunnel comes out. It’s the start of everything. Arthurton is a bit of a self-cleaning oven, if ya like, but if it does come apart, the whole place is fooked in a heartbeat. We had a wee problem down there once, had to stop people coming across for a bit, and the money dried up quick smart. The locals were screaming.” He moved his hand halfway up the island’s east coast. “That's Petersen. Then Hinze and that pinprick there, on the cape, that’s Domino. It’s officially Do-mean-oh but that’s where the Doomriders do their thing. From what I hear, ya know a thing or two about bikies?”

“A thing or two,” said Romano.

“Good. Then ya know to leave them be. They’re into the usual over here. They own a lot of the strip clubs and the like, have other bits and pieces spread about. Then we’ve got The Strip here, that's where things get multicultural. The Italians did all this back in the day, and they own the three main joints; The Chateau Agri, The Gold Point Hotel, and Little Venice. The Chinese, the fookin Chans, own The Sands and a pub around the way. Then a couple of fat cats own The Bond Mirage over the hill. And all these people, all these different colors and creeds, they have all found a way to get along. They live here, they do their business and no one gets hurt…unless someone steps out of line and, ya trust me on this, I'll know about it before ya do. All
ya
need to do is not fook this up. That's it. Ya fill in your days however ya like, just don't fook this up.”

“Where’s the bad end of town?”

“Down south. Self-cleaning, like I said with Arthurton.”

“And the indigenous population?”

“Fook no. They all pissed off to the south island years ago. You won't see too many Abos over here, a couple down in Drainland—that’s one of the camps down on the other side there—but for the most part, they keep to themselves.” He splashed a handful of seawater onto his face. “Okay, that’s that. So let me just say it, I'll be watching ya, from that wee island over there and from all over. Ya just keep ya head straight, Constable, and there won't be any trouble. Just try and fit in. Ya in paradise now, fooking paradise.” O’Shea gave a small wheezing laugh and dived under. He was a strong swimmer and by the time Romano made it back in, the entire crew were halfway back up the beach. They’d left her uniform and firearm behind in the sand.

B
ack at the station
, Denny and Chandler sat in their usual spot. They’d ironed their uniforms and given the whole building a cosmetic wipe and tidy, but it still looked the same. As Romano came past, Denny spotted her wet hair and said, “I bloody told you.” Romano flipped him the bird and kept walking. Halfway along the hallway to her office, she remembered something and doubled back.

“Hey, the Inspector mentioned something about living in the bay, some
wee island
off the coast or some shit. Either of you know what he’s on about?”

Chandler skated his chair across the floor to the opposing wall. There, above a wide pile of unordered paperwork and the house collection of used magazines, someone had pinned a small laminated map to the paintwork. Chandler extracted a ruler from the pile and tapped it against the wall.

“You see, Romano, we have this thing called a
map
of the island.”

She went to it and looked.

“The good Inspector would never stoop to living here on Tunnel itself, on this outpost of sin and corruption,” he said.

“He’s above it,” added Denny.

“Instead, he—like a lot of fine rich people—opts to live really close to the sin and corruption instead.” Chandler moved the ruler up to a small atoll about an inch off the north coast of Tunnel. “It doesn't even have a name, that’s how exclusive it is.”

“Really?” said Romano.

“Uh-huh,” said Chandler.

“What does everyone else call it then?”

“Bridge,” said Denny.

“Jesus,” said Romano. She leaned close to the map, trying to make out every detail. She scanned down the coastlines and picked up the spelling and shape of the places O’Shea had mentioned. They had the underwater tunnel marked as a red dotted line leading into Arthurton. “Does living here ever stop feeling weird?”

“Oh yeah, sure,” said Chandler. “That's when you know you’re completely fucked.”

Denny laughed. “I feel fine,” he said.