The Bat(108)

‘Diethyl ether.’

‘—and afterwards tied Andrew to a chair, found his gear and the little dope he had left and gave him the lot so I could be sure he would be quiet until I returned from the theatre. On the way back I got hold of some more shit and Andrew and I had a real party. Yes, it really took off and when I left he was hanging from the ceiling.’

Again the low chuckle. Harry concentrated on taking deep, calm breaths. He had never been so afraid in his whole life.

‘What do you mean by you had to punish them?’

‘What?’

‘You said before you had to punish them.’

‘Oh, that. Yes, as I’m sure you know, psychopaths are often paranoid, or they suffer from other delusions. My delusion is that my mission in life is to avenge my people.’

‘By raping white women?’

‘Childless white women.’

‘Childless?’ Harry repeated, bemused. That was a feature common to the victims that the investigation hadn’t picked up, and why would they? There was nothing unusual about such young women not having had children.

‘Yes, indeed. Had you really not noticed? Terra Nullius, Harry! When you came here you defined us as nomads without property because we didn’t sow seeds in the earth. You took our country from us, raped and killed it in front of our very eyes.’ Toowoomba didn’t need to raise his voice. The words were loud enough. ‘Well, your childless women are now my terra nullius, Harry. No one has fertilised them, therefore no one owns them. I’m only following the white man’s logic and doing as he does.’

‘But you call it a delusion yourself, Toowoomba! You know how sick it is!’

‘Of course it’s sick. But sickness is normal, Harry. It’s the absence of sickness that’s dangerous, for then the organism stops fighting and it soon falls apart. But delusions, Harry, don’t underestimate them. They’re worth having in every culture. Take your own, for example. In Christianity there is open discussion about how difficult it is to have faith, how doubts can nag at even the cleverest, the most devout priest. But isn’t the very acknowledgement of doubt the same as admitting that the faith you choose to live by is a delusion? You shouldn’t renounce your delusions so easily, Harry. At the other end of the rainbow there may be a reward.’

Harry lay back in bed. He tried not to think about Birgitta, about her not having had any children.

‘How could you know they were childless?’ he heard himself say in a husky voice.

‘I asked.’

‘How . . .?’

‘Some of them said they had children because they believed I would spare them if they said they provided for a bunch of kids. They had thirty seconds to prove it. A mother who doesn’t carry a photo of her child is no mother, if you ask me.’

Harry swallowed. ‘Why blonde?’

‘This isn’t a hard and fast rule. It just minimises the chance of them having any of my people’s blood in their veins.’

Harry tried not to think about Birgitta’s milky-white skin. Toowoomba gave a low chuckle.

‘I can see there’s a lot you want to know, Harry, but using mobile phones is expensive and idealists like me aren’t rich. You know what you must do and what you mustn’t.’

Then he was gone. The quickly falling dusk had cast a grey darkness over the room during the conversation. Two circling feelers of a cockroach poked through the crack in the doorway, checking to see if the coast was clear. Harry pulled the sheet over him and huddled up. On the roof outside the window a solitary kookaburra started the evening concert, and King’s Cross wound itself up for another long night.

Harry dreamed about Kristin. He may have done that during two seconds of REM sleep, but there was half a lifetime to unravel, so it might have taken longer. She was wearing his green dressing gown; she stroked his hair and told him to accompany her. He asked her where to, but she was standing in the half-open balcony door with the curtains flapping around her and the children in the backyard were making such a racket that he didn’t hear her answer. Every now and then he was so dazzled by the sun that she completely disappeared from view.

He got off his bed and went closer to hear what she was saying, but then she laughed and ran onto the balcony, climbed up the railing and floated off like a green balloon. Up she floated to the rooftops, shouting: ‘Come on, everyone! Come on, everyone!’ Later in the dream he ran around asking everyone he knew where the party was, but either they didn’t know or they’d already gone. Then he went down to Frogner Lido, but he didn’t have enough money for a ticket and had to clamber over the fence. Once on the other side, he discovered he’d cut himself, and blood was leaving a trail behind him on the grass, over the tiles and up the steps to the ten-metre diving board. No one else was there, so he lay on his back and looked up at the sky, listening to the tiny wet splashes as drops of blood fell and hit the edge of the swimming pool far below. High up, towards the sun, he thought he could discern a floating green figure. He put his hands in front of his eyes, like a pair of binoculars, and then he could see her quite clearly. She was so beautiful and almost transparent.