Isle of Snakes

Isle of Snakes

Though he was young, the man who answered the door was bald but with a bandage stuck to the back of his head. He was wearing a blue dressing gown. Bare feet.

“Come in officer,” he said.

“Are you well, sir?” I asked.

It was a much refurbished two-story beach shack resting against crayfish-colored rocks not far from a sea chopped by the wind rubbing Tasmania’s east coast. The glass-paned front door opened directly on a kitchen rich with gleaming steel utensils, polished wood and posh down-lights.

“Yes, yes, they checked me. I was discharged. Bit of a headache.” He turned and bumbled into a table. Then he did not seem to know where he was - staring uncertainly at the one other door. “Yes, sorry, sorry…this way.”

He eased onto a leather couch with brocaded cushions. I sat at the edge of another chair.

“You’re… you’re Sergeant … Anderson… the one who…”

“Senior Constable,” I mumbled. Everybody knew. Formerly Senior Detective.

“That was awful what those two guys were doing.”

“I am sorry Mister Clive. I am not able to talk about it.”

“I understand…” but he looked, assessing. I was dogged by the past. Two corrupt young detectives, Bain and Salmont, started a scam on my watch. Doing drug raids during the week, mainly for weed, giving out warnings, keeping the goods then selling in the Launceston park mainly to kids every Friday night at 11 pm. Blatant, regular, enterprising.

Sometimes they had the cheek to do it from a marked police car: a suited young man at the wheel, another in the back seat. Down came the window. Ready for business. Many a skateboard-toting youth had his belief that society was bent confirmed by the activities of those two. No one dobbed them in because it was a much-valued service.

I had half caught wind of it. But did nothing. A visiting Federal Police officer made the bust. Embarrassing for the state force. Disastrous for me.

It had been a long pause, but he said: “Clive is my first name. My surname is Bonde. That’s with an E.”

I had my crummy spiral-bound notebook and made the correction as he directed.

He was running the show. I did not like it. “Tell me what happened?” I was sharp.

“Oh, I was … I… ahh, let me see, I… ahhh …” I tapped my pen at the page. “Well… I ahhh…”

“I understand it happened when you got home. What time was that?”

“Oh, oh, it was about two thirty. I work as a psychologist, mainly in schools. I do home visits on weekends. Sometimes I can knock off early. I found the place had been half ransacked… went to look further then…whack! on back of my head.” He felt at the remnants, gingerly. “When I came to my senses, I found that all that was gone was a notebook. It had been on my writing desk…”

“Tell me about it…”

“It is mahogany, a roll-top… was my grandfather’s but…”

“No! The notebook!”

“Oh, oh, hah! Yes, yes, the notebook. I found it last Wednesday. I often have lunch on the beach front at Bicheno and it was left on a bench. I should have handed it in. Inside an unnamed man was ranting about his Jenny. Failed relationship. I do apologize but I could not resist. I am a writer…”

Ah huh. Always I have found writers to be a rum lot.

“…and I wanted to … pry into someone’s thoughts…” rueful laugh. “He was really stuck… It amazes me how some people just can’t move on.”

He gave me a thoughtful look. I knew what he was driving at. The press were all over that Launceston case including the comment – again and again – that the responsible officer was “distracted by the end of his marriage” Just can’t move on, eh? I bristled.

“So, what did it look like?”

“The notebook? Ow…um…”

“The cover?”

“Black. Definitely black. Small.”

“Did it have a brand name?”

“Brand name? Yes, a good question. Um… um… Dominion? No… no… Started with M. That’s it, Moleskine. Handsome little book. Desirable... ”

“Anything else?”

“No… no… I think that’s it. Hang on. The most important point. After I had it for a couple of days, I found something up the back. It was a map. The drawing of an island in a river. No details. Just the word ‘river’, a cross on the island and a measurement from the tip… ”

My ears, as they say, were picking up.

“…and the words ‘buried here’... A treasure map. How naff.”

Naff?

“…but there was no indication of where it was…well, I couldn’t work it out… But I suppose that is why it was stolen. Couldn’t have been the man’s ranting.”

“Unless he values his privacy…” I said, intentionally snide.

2.

After I left the house I was fuming. “Can’t move on.” A dig at me. Smart arse. No one realizes how hard it is. How complex.

In the dusk suddenly I found that damned notebook in the long grass by my patrol car. Thieves can be such idiots. They had dropped it. Or…

Can a black object have a glow of its own as if with dark magic? This did. I had a strange connection… A High School play. My friend Bill Cottle from sixth form playing Macbeth, turned bad by witches. This notebook? What nonsense.

But, an uncanny feeling, was someone watching me?

I took it home. The wrong man was driving. I had been a good copper for so, so long. It should have been evidence. It should have been sent for forensics… but the “should do” in me had gone out like a snuffed candle. Yes, a darkened self.

3.

That writer was a dope. The map was well-drawn, easy on Google to find it was Egg Island, Huon River in southern Tasmania. Then I noticed a torn-out page. Despite the quality paper someone’s heavy hand had left impressions on the next sheet. With school-boy forensics – a pencil – I found what was written. A tally of notes, currency in USD-Sterling-AUD. Seven bundles. My guestimate: $20k. OK.

I rang my mate Morrie. A former cop. He knew the Huon.

“Egg island? Crawling with Joe Blakes…” he said. “Notechis scutatus. The Tasmanian tiger snake…The old timers tell me it will go for the inside of your leg, the femoral artery. It is a close relative of the cobra and makes a mini-hood when aggressive. Run if you see that. I wouldn’t go to Egg island, mate. Suicidal. Alive with the bastards… They think they own it. ”

But I was drawn.

I have an aluminum runabout with a 60 Hp Evinrude, a “tinny”. The following Monday afternoon I nosed down the northern channel of the river off the coast of Egg Island. On the south channel was the weatherboard village of Franklin with its nestle of boats, touristy shops and restaurants. Bright in the sunshine.

Above me a gloomy cloud seemed stuck, threatening rain and darkening everything.

The water was flat, calm, a tidal pull towards the ocean. The beginnings of estuary.

I had a GPS and worked out the measurement as it showed on the map. 184 yards from the point of the island. I killed the engine, turned and pulled oars. Ahead was sword grass and harsh scrub beneath a thin array of stunted eucalypts like old men, their heads bent as if they wandered lost. A cold wind teased, an ill finger on my neck.

I noticed there was a place by the riverbank where the undergrowth was disturbed and anchored there. I watched for a moment. Nothing moved but the slight flicker of leaves made nervous by the breeze.

I had a .202 rifle, a rabbiting gun. Tiger snakes, the lore goes, fear humans more than want to attack. Blam! I shot in the undergrowth. Sure enough, I heard the rustle of a fleeing serpent like a whip composed of muscle. The speed and power of the motion! The sense of shrubbery barged out of the way!

I stepped on land. I fired again. Blam! into the shrubs. Nothing. Foot-treads showed ahead in the long grass. I made more steps. Blam! Nothing. Further on. Blam! This time: unseen muscular sounds. Scrub being shoved. Two right, one to the left but they did not seem to move far off.

I stopped, nervous. I was cold but clammy with sweat. Then I saw one. It was draped along the tops of sword grass a stone’s throw from me. Enormous. It was seven feet long, thick as a man’s calf. A dull olive color with the subtle stripes of its kind. I saw the blunt head, beady eyes. The flicker of tongue. It was flattened behind at the neck as if someone had stood on it. I raised the gun. It turned to me. Another coiled just behind … a head lifted further over. A nest of them.

Blam! I fired just short of the big one. They scattered. What a racket! But stopped not too far away.

The sword grass now was hip high. Dangerous. Blam! Every step. Blam! Blam! Then, easy to see, half-interred, the handle of a sports bag. I grabbed it, pulled it out. Zipped open. Bundles of money. Much more than seven. Success! I clutched it to me and fell to my knees with joy. Success! At last, a success in my life.

Big mistake. I heard a rustle behind me and felt a blow to the inside of my leg just below my butt cheek. Tiger snakes hit you with such force it is called a strike not a bite. I wheeled around but it was gone before I could see. I rose and staggered. Fell. Used the gun to right me. Blam! An accidental shot near my ear. I was half-deafened but heard more rustling and I panicked. I set off on a leg-dragging run.

Blam! A wild shot.

I made it to the riverbank then “Argh!” Another strike. This time I saw it. A tiddler only eighteen inches long with that small hood of anger. It chewed at my ankle and the pain was immense. The shock of it tipped me forward and I face-planted on the metal floor of my dinghy, the rifle clattering overboard, the bag safely clutched. Somehow, I got the anchor. The engine started but I must have hit the kill button when I passed out.

I was found drifting on the river, but in a bad state. They saved me. Antivenom. Three days in an induced coma. Dreadful damage to my liver, constant headaches. And a hell of a stink about it, of course. Suspended without pay then sacked. Charged with theft by finding and perversion of the course of justice. Probably gaol time coming.

That money was not mine for long.

But want to know the worst of it – to me? Tiger snakes do not have a fang that injects but a primitive triangular tooth with a channel. It breaks the skin, and the venom enters the cut. To further achieve this, they gnaw at you. I remember as if in slow motion. Gnaw… gnaw… gnaw…

Untreated for a few hours the upper wound got infected then - necrosis of the flesh. I have a rotted chasm on the inside of my left gluteal which has not healed. Sometimes it goes putrid then starts to weep. See what happens if you embrace evil? I am the literal case in point. It will bite you on the arse.

I have not much left. Not even life. My liver is perilous. My buttock: a high risk of sepsis. That damned notebook. It has brought me to a bitter end.

I shift in my chair.

But get this. After my full statement, the notebook went to the lost property office. From where it has since been stolen.