PREVIOUSLY
From the beginning, Part 1: Alberto Drops In To Save The World.
Previous installment Part 11: Alberto Drops In To Save The World.
Marus Burdic is on the trail, Richard Kanitji strikes back, and Lady Jane drops in with news for Alberto.
Part 12
Byron Brookes remembered back to the moon landing. How old was he? Still in short pants, running around the lounge. His older brother trying very to pretend he was too cool to want to be an astronaut. Everyone crowded around a television, black and white and propped in front of the mantelpiece where the old pendulum clock ticked over a new dawn for humankind. And beyond a sense that everyone in the world was doing the same, as if the opening of the door of the lunar lander was a portal every person could move through after Armstrong and Aldrin.
That feeling was buzzing around his head as he looked at the video of the thylacine on his phone. Maybe it wasn’t going to be the whole world, but almost all of Tasmania would see this video in the next day or two. Share it, diss it, comment on it, wonder at it.
His video.
How on earth had it got onto Premier News Network and around the world? Bridgewater Gerry had something to do with it as they’d given her credit for it. He was about to pick up the blower and ask what was going on when he remembered also that he’d told her it didn’t happen.
And she’ll hold me to it, he thought. The hottest video in the land – at least the 15 minutes of fame that Andy Warhol promised – and I can’t claim because I didn’t claim it.
He burst into the mightiest fit of laughter at the realisation that it must have been his wife who took it off his phone. Well played Jackie, wherever you are. That’s the kind of gutsiness that was why he’d fallen in love with her those many years ago.
Brookes rubbed his eyes, also realising that despite the coronavirus warnings, he just could not get out of the habit of touching his face.
Self-control. Lack of.
He watched the thylacine bury its snout into the camera and then dash off. He watched it again and again. It was almost timeless already. Unlike the sad figures that paced around barren enclosures as they counted down the days to extinction, this one was wild and free. It may not have wanted to show itself to the world, but there it was.
He recalled the way it had sailed effortlessly through the air and knocked him off balance.
Somewhere between a small step and a giant leap.
* * * * *
Zach had been feeling a little guilty about the cats.
He didn’t really have feelings for them, but about them. Deirdre Marks thought they were going to good homes and he was feeding them to a hungry Tasmanian tiger in her own backyard that she didn’t even know about.
Zach had tried taking her some food. She’d accepted, only after he’d insisted, and he decided he didn’t need to do it again. His neighbour said that the cancer drugs affected her appetite and she really didn’t long for any food at all, although she ate soup just to have enough energy to get through the day.
What she did like was to talk about her son Liam. Zach had been able to accumulate quite a few details about what kind of person he was, what he used to do, what kind of people he hung out with and so on.
In his spare time, Zach looked for Liam. At first there had been nothing, and it had been particularly hard as the contagion spread. People had other concerns than other-side-of-the-worlders looking for the long lost.
But he’d persevered. Even when he started to get some responses they were pants. “Oh I saw your query about the Liam fella and I was wondering if you could help me trace my great great grandfather who I understand went to…”
This one was different though. A lady had sent through a photo of one of her neighbours from across the road in Laois. She hadn’t know him very well, she told Zach, because he’d spent long days commuting into Dublin on the train. But he had an Australian accent more so than an Irish one and he’d been quite a nice man.
One day, she wrote, he was brought home by ambulance. The social workers who dropped him off said he’d been hit by a car while walking down a lane on the way back from the station at night, and had been in hospital for two months.
Since then he’d not had trouble even speaking, let alone working. A man came several times a week to help him with things around the house, and the therapist once a week.
She waived at Liam every time she went passed, but it was clear that all he remembered was that she was the woman who waved at him.
One day she’d gone closer and taken a photo.
Zach looked at the photo. I can’t tell, but I’d bet that even a dying mother with cancer could pick her son in a blurry photo taken metres away.
* * * * *
Bridgewater Gerry’s phone was running white hot. When she stopped answering calls her email box filled up instead and ‘virtually’ overflowed onto the floor, across the faded green carpet with lifeless flowers and down the hallway. If she closed her eyes she could imagine the stream building up and up and up until it burst open the front door and flooded the front lawn.
What did she have, really? A policeman on the radio saying ‘possible thylacine attack’. An inconclusive video, that she’s had touched up anyway. A Byron Brookes denial. A lot of international, and local, interest in a species that has been thought extinct at least eighty years.
Still not a lot. No physical evidence. Without that it could just be a prank. Elaborate maybe, if they’d faked an attack on a copper. And why do that anyway? Why indeed? And if so why now? Was it because most people were following the orders to stay at home, and therefore unable to get out and look? And somewhat gullible for a ‘good news story’ that would make them feel better while they pondered the sharp shock of coronavirus completely shutting down life as they knew it?
I need more, she thought. This is my story. I supplied the video that CNN is pumping around the world. Whatever she could get would keep it ticking over a while longer. The CNN windfall was a lifesaver, but a prolonged run of this story could consolidate the position of the nipaluna Newsmonger through a period when plum advertising was going to be very hard to come by.
She put a call into Jennarenn Jetsam.
“Jets, how goes?”
“Sorry, is this…is that you Gerry?”
“The one, the only, the very battered.”
“Oh hey you!”
“Saw your vox pops on the CNN story. Good gear. Hope they paid well.”
“I have strung for much worse,” said Jetsam, “and undoubtedly you have too.”
“Too right. Look … would you do some stuff for me?”
“Yep, sure. What?”
“Same story, but it’s gotta be hard. Anything concrete. Don’t want anecdotes and supposition, bugger that. Find anyone who has anything concrete. Photo. Footprint. Hair, scat, whatever. We will pay for anything actually real but careful how you go about that. Get your nose to the ground and find anyone who has anything.”
“Mmmkay. Can do. Any pointers?”
“Look, that video came from Brookes’ house. Yeah, I know. Anyway, that’s the presumed location. Now the police sighting if you can call it that was a few blocks up from The Cray And Beanie pub. So that’s our hot zone, the corridor between those two places. Widen it a bit. Do a bit of doorknocking in there. Check the parks, talk to the walkers and ask if they’ve seen anything.”
“On it.”
“You’re the one!” exclaimed Gerry. “I’ve looked at my site stats, this was big to start with. CNN lifted it to the stratosphere. If we get the next big break on this we’re going all the way to outer space, Jets.”
“All the way!”
“One last thing. Brookes denied it ever happened. Because whatever. See if you can get to him out of the limelight, not talking smack just telling it like it was. That might lead to something.”
* * * * *
Inspector Don Sell looked at the statement he had drafted. The words stared back, challenging him.
There are reports circulating on an animal at large that may resemble a thylacine, according to some views.
This is not a police matter.
If it turns out to be a native animal, it is the responsibility of Parks and Wildlife.
If it is some kind of domestic animal such as a dog, it is a matter for councils. Anyone who sees it can call their local council and ask to be put through to the Animal Control section who will deal with the matter as appropriate.
It would be prudent not to approach the animal, regardless of what it is, as it may be aggressive.
Please do not call the police hotline with information on animal sightings.
We also remind the public that under the emergency rules, people even when leaving their house for exercise should not leave their local government area. People are not permitted to drive or wander around the state aimlessly…
How to finish the sentence?
…in the hope of seeing what is very unlikely to be a thylacine.
Stay home, save lives.
The words ‘regardless of what it is’ bugged him. He was beginning to sound like Sergeant Mark Di Loreto. And that was not a good thing.
It would be prudent not to approach any unknown animal as it may be aggressive.
Bugger bugger bugger.
It would be prudent not to approach any animal at large as it may be aggressive.
Animal at large. Not ideal, but I’ve already said it at the start. Besides, it doesn’t imply that we can’t identify it.
He pressed the send button and forwarded the statement to the Superintendent for final approval. By the following day, all Tasmanians would be being urged not to approach animals at large.
* * * * *
“Gerry? Got something.”
“That was quick! Jetsam firing on all cylinders.”
“Yeah, well. I made a few calls. I have some nature types in my book. Hit a paydirty patch with a bloke called Marus Burdic. I did a feature on him a few years ago and sold it to an airline mag. Anyway, he’s a tour guide and genuine bushie. Getting on though, doesn’t do as many trips as he used to and lives in Hobart.”
“Mmm, vaguely heard of him. Has he got something?” asked Bridgewater Gerry.
“You bet. He says he found a print a when he was out walking. One good one. Took a photo with his phone at night. Went back the next day with some stuff to make a cast but it had been trampled over by pademelons.”
“Uffa.”
“Here’s the thing. He’s had his photo enhanced as best as he can, and compared it with known photos of thylacine prints. Reckons it’s a match.”
“You don’t think he’s faking it…just for the hell of it?”
Jennaren Jetsam shook her head, physically and metaphorically.
“Not the type. I got the impression he’d rather be sitting alone on top of a mountain than in the middle of a hunt for holy grail of extinct Tasmanian animals. But he says he found what he found and in the interests of science it deserves to shared.”
“Very noble,” said Gerry. “As long as he’s sharing it with us.”
“Photos on their way right now! His original, his retouched version, and a 1915 reference shot from the archives.”
* * * * *
Late at night Zach brought Alberto over to the house. He thought he could use a bit of company and warmth.
They talked about what the PNN story meant. International was one thing, but the local news looked like it was white hot. With no festivals nor major events, with most people at home for study or work or out of fear, there was not much on the news apart from coronavirus this and coronavirus that. A thylacine sighting was the feel-good news of the month, if not the year. The decade. The almost century of shame since the last known thylacine died of neglect at the Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart.
“I don’t know,” said Alberto gloomily. “I mean. I still don’t know what I’m doing here. Locked up in a shed. Hiding.”
“You’re not locked up,” replied Zach. “You…just don’t really have anywhere to go.”
“And the difference is…?”
“Everyone’s kind of locked up. Not just here, in just about every country I can think of.”
“People are. I’m not a people.”
“No.”
“And I thought I was dead. Happily dead if you must know. Now I’m alive, but can’t roam the forests. Can’t wake to the scent of mist over buttongrass. Can’t yawn at the foot of the bluff where the river tumbles down with the best water in the world. Might as well be dead.”
Alberto shivered a little.
“Seems like police are not calling any more and their attention elsewhere,” said Zach. “Would you like to spend the night here?”
Alberto thought about it.
“Thank you but no. I appreciate the offer but I’ve got used to the shed. It’s proper dark and I feel comfortable in the dark. It’s a good space.”
Zach looked thoughtful.
“Real dark for a city. Dark as a metre up a currawong’s bum.”
The secret’s out, and Alberto is on the run! Join Alberto and Zach’s coronavirus adventure in Part 12 of Alberto Drops In To Save The World next weekend.
