“Just one glass,” he pleaded. “Something to wash down the meal.”
“Water’s not wet enough for you?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Henry said. “I have seen the very worst of you these past few days. You are an addict, Francis, you have absolutely no self-control. But I will need you at your best on the stand.”
“My best,” he echoed, laughing.
“Sober, then.”
“I wouldn’t be any use to you if I was.”
“I will take my chances. It will have to suffice.”
“Truthfully, Henry, I’m more likely to soil myself. I am nothing without the drink—sobriety is far from a pretty sight.”
And this the man, Henry reminded himself, on whom the whole case hung. He smiled in an attempt to make light of the admission.“Well, of course you would say that. Anything to weaken my resolve.”
“But you’ve seen me. You said so yourself. I’m in purgatory here. Please, Henry. Just to help me settle. It’s been terriblethese past few days.”
Henry sighed and looked about. The smoking man was watching them, the other still engrossed in his dominoes. He could certainlyagree with the reverend on that much, though it had felt more like damnation than purgatory to him. Baking in their traincarriage, lying awake in his rickety bunk, Reverend Bean moaning and thrashing beneath him, no chance of sleep; then for twodays being ceaselessly jiggered about in that coach, the reverend taken ill from withdrawal, vomiting out the window sincethe driver wouldn’t stop. Henry could well sympathize. He’d been craving a drink himself.
“All right. Just the one glass. Help calm you down.”
Reverend Bean pounced on the wine and gulped it, spilling drops on his chin and shirtfront. “Thank you,” he gasped. “Truly.”
Henry watched the color seep back into his cheeks. He had never met a man so contradictory. Pious yet morally bankrupt, witha strange near-childlike innocence given all he’d seen. He refilled the wineglass and noticed the reverend’s gaze wander fearfullyaround the room. “Now what?” Henry asked.
Reverend Bean leaned closer. “What if he’s already here?”
“Who?”
“Him.”
Henry laughed. “And? What if he is?”
“I told you what he once threatened me with.”
“Twelve years ago, Francis. The man is now a harmless bureaucrat well into his middle years. You have nothing to fear there.”
Henry concealed the lie with a long drink. He still hadn’t shaken off his meeting with Edmund Noone, how he had somehow seenright through him; those deathly hollow eyes. Every day since the inquest was ordered he had waited for the reprisal: an anonymousletter to Laura, some thug putting him against a wall. There’d been nothing. As if Noone was only too happy to participate.Tempting to think he had the man running scared but he doubted it. Noone didn’t seem the kind.
“You don’t know what he’s capable of,” Reverend Bean was saying. “When I saw him in that desert, when I looked into thoseeyes . . .”
“Calm yourself, Francis. You came to me, remember, nobody forced you to do this. If you truly felt that way you would nothave spoken up in the first place, or else why are we even here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Well it’s clearly not a crisis of conscience. You are hardly a reformed man.”
Reverend Bean glanced at the wine. Henry relented, nodded, and this time Bean savored the flavor, his eyes closed. He openedthem again and said, “I am dying, Mr. Wells, if you haven’t noticed. I have drunk myself to an early grave. Which means thatin short order I shall be standing before God attempting to justify myself, and what on earth will I say? If I do nothing,my soul is forsaken, since by then it will be too late. So I am trying. Redemption, forgiveness, these are always selfishacts. I am no different. I’m here to save myself.”
Henry took a moment to process this. Indeed, it was obvious, now that he’d said it, how ill the man really was; perhaps Henryjust hadn’t wanted to see. He cleared his throat and asked him, “And that is worth crossing Noone for, in your eyes?”
Wearily, Reverend Bean smiled. “Like I said, I am dying—what do I have to lose?”
That night Henry lay tossing in his bedsheets, impossible to get to sleep. The sheets smelled of mildew, the mattress was misshapen, the pillow lumpen, the room was both stifling and damp. Moonlight blazed through the threadbare curtains and cast long shadows on the floor, bursts of laughter and voices coming up from the bar below. He flipped over and lay stewing. No such problems for Reverend Bean—Henry could hear him snoring through the wall. He sighed and tried to settle. Think of the case . . . think of the case. Tomorrow he would meet the magistrate, ask some questions around town; he would get a shave and haircut, and buy Reverend Bean a new suit. Off-cuts only. The cheapest and closest fit. Certain expenses might be reclaimable, others not, but this was all an investment in Henry’s eyes. Any finding of impropriety against Chief Inspector Noone, any at all—which in the circumstances should be an obscenely low bar for the magistrate to clear—paved the way for a criminal prosecution, and that was when the real fun would begin. They could charge him back in Brisbane, try him in the Supreme Court, with all the pomp and ceremony, and surely it would be Henry’s case to bring. He was the one who had been out here, laid the groundwork, seen this place for himself. He knew the case and had the trust of the key witness: Reverend Bean wouldn’t confide in anyone else. And he would win, goddamnit, he would put that bastard away, the first time it had ever been done . . . and Henry’s career, his whole life, would be transformed.
All this misery would be worth it. His very own Trials of Hercules.
What with the snoring and the noise from downstairs and the chatter of his own thoughts, Henry didn’t hear the click of thedoor along the hall.
