The Dunbar Case(12)

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I was stiff from the drive and I wandered around the streets for a while to get the kinks out. It was cold with a sharp breeze and I upped the pace to keep warm. Back in the motel I plugged into their connection to use the laptop to check for emails. Nothing important. I took some of my prescribed pills and poured myself a solid scotch to offset the indignity. That gave me an appetite and I went to a nearby Indian restaurant with Conrad for company.



I had battered cauliflower for an entree and goat curry for a main. The food was good and the small carafe of house wine washed it down well. Jim was getting himself deeper and deeper into trouble. I’d seen the film many years before; Peter O’Toole was well cast, but the book was a good deal darker than the film.



Wakefield had asked, or rather told, me to contact him as soon as I reached Bathurst. But I was still irked by the feeling that he had an agenda I wasn’t aware of and I was taking petty revenge by delaying the call. I dialled his mobile and got a message. A few minutes later the text came through:



Ask him what he remembers about his paternal grandparents.

Ask him where they were living when he was young.

Ask him about the family Bible.

Tell him there could be a six figure sum for him if things work out well.



Experience has taught me that when people deliver messages with more than one clause, the important subject is in the middle, not at the beginning or the end. Wakefield really wanted to know about the Twizell family Bible: so, I had to admit, did I.



I slept the way you do in motels when you’re on your own, especially after a few drinks. You miss the usual house and neighbourhood sounds that reassure you subliminally, and you need at least one piss. I got up at 3.30am and couldn’t get back to sleep. Again, as in most Australian motels, the bedside lights weren’t well placed for reading. I turned on the television, flicked through the channels and turned it off. I couldn’t find Radio National, the only station I ever listened to. I did the crossword and eventually fell asleep just as light was showing through the dusty Venetian blinds.



~ * ~



As a person accredited by a legal practitioner I was permitted to visit in the morning; others could only visit in the afternoon. The gaol was three kilometres west of town and I was in the parking area at 10am sharp. The place would have been forbidding enough on a bright sunny day, but the heavily overcast sky and gusting cold wind gave it an extra air of gloom. I’d read up on it a bit. The sandstone gate featured a hand-carved lion with keys in its mouth, supposedly a symbol of the might of the law. They were keen on that sort of thing in Victorian times when the gaol was built. As they will, prisoners found a way to undercut the symbol—legend had it that when the keys fell from the lion’s mouth all the prisoners would be freed. The gaol had had a foul reputation as harsh and ill-run until the prisoners rioted in 1970 causing enormous damage. An official inquiry brought reforms and, as far as I knew, it now ran on the standard lines.



I’d been briefly on remand in Long Bay gaol in the past and had served a short sentence in Berrima, and I’d visited clients, friends and enemies inside, so I knew how to behave in a prison. You have to desensitise yourself to sounds, sights and smells. The absence of freedom sits like a cloud of smoke in the air and nothing on the outside resembles the sensation of waiting for the door behind you to be locked before the one in front of you can be opened.



I went through the procedure of divesting myself of keys, mobile and coins. The supervising officer was a woman.



‘Can I give him the smokes?’



‘The prisoner will receive them later.’



‘Can I trust you?’



There’s a TAFE course for correctional officers; they probably have a technique for removing the sense of humour.



I was conducted down corridors smelling of institutional cleanser to a windowless room with a lino-tiled floor and walls in the same grey shade. There were three tables and six chairs and heavy staples set in the floor near three of the chairs for the prisoners to be shackled if necessary. There was a clock mounted high above a door opposite the one I had come through. There are lots of clocks in prisons and they don’t offer comfort.



The door opened and a guard escorted in a man I had to convince myself was John Dalgarno Twizell. I thought I was accustomed to the impact prison makes on people, but I was shocked at this man’s appearance. Four years ago he’d been stocky, running to fat and aggressive-looking, now he seemed very different. His green overalls hung loosely on him because he’d replaced the fat with lean muscle and the fuck-you look of his staring eyes and shaved skull had changed to a calculating smirk. He had shaggy brown hair.