Read Online Through a Camel's Eye by Dorothy Johnston - Free Book Online Page B

tired and full of what seemed to Chris like old and useless anger.
    â€˜The bloke gave me a bad feeling from the moment they pulled in. You know how it is sometimes. There’ll be a hundred, and one will make your skin crawl.’
    Chris nodded. He’d felt that often enough, going into a pub on a hot summer night, when one word out of place would start a fight. Almost straight away, he could pick the man who’d say that word, loudly, in his presence and in defiance of it. It was his job to stop that happening. It was Alex’s job too. People wouldn’t return to a van park where fights broke out, not people with young families, and fishermen who just wanted to sit on the beach with a rod and reel and cook their catch in the twilight.
    â€˜Tell me about it.’
    â€˜The barbecues were full. This one’s old man claimed he got there first.’
    Alex lifted his chin and Chris understood that, rather than seeing Margaret Benton, it was her husband’s outline that was before his eyes.
    â€˜Another camper claimed he got there first as well. He had friends to back him up, but he was willing to accept my ruling on the matter. It could have come to blows, would have, I think, except that Jack - oh, yes, I remember his name - took stock of his opponents and decided he could take on one man, but not four.’
    â€˜Benton was drunk?’
    â€˜Not so you’d notice. A nasty piece of work drunk or sober, and looking for a fight.’ Alex indicated the photograph again. ‘This lady tried to hose him down, but I don’t think she expected to succeed.’
    â€˜What did you make of her?’
    â€˜I never thought about it, to be honest. Penny might have more to say on that score. She saw it on the news, that she’d gone missing.’
    And never phoned to tell me, Chris thought but didn’t say.
    â€˜How long were they here?’
    â€˜Less than the week they’d booked for. I told Benton he’d have to leave.’
    â€˜Could you dig out the registration details?’
    â€˜Now?’
    â€˜If you wouldn’t mind.’
    Chris sipped his beer while Alex took down a folder from a shelf behind the counter and began thumbing through it.
    He found the page he was looking for, and Chris copied the information.
    â€˜Was Ben around when the argument broke out over the barbecues?’
    Alex nodded. ‘It was Ben who came running to tell me.’
    They talked for a few more minutes. Chris thanked him for the beer and the information, and said he had to go.

TWELVE
    A week of heavy rain washed Margaret Benton’s body out from a bank of the Murray River. She’d been buried less than a kilometre from where she’d lived in Swan Hill.
    Chris realised he’d known that she was dead; he hadn’t had a moment’s doubt. From Anthea’s expression as she listened to the news, it seemed that she’d believed this too.
    â€˜The body was right on the bank.’
    â€˜What about ID?’
    â€˜None on her. Identified from dental records.’
    â€˜They’ll send somebody down here now,’ Chris said.
    A river bank had disgorged a body. Chris replayed the scene in his mind, as though it was one he’d witnessed personally; not just any river, but the Murray in flood, the body spinning in the water, jostling those of sheep and luckless cattle, yet not rolling far. What if the dead woman’s remains had not been caught in branches, stopped by a fallen tree? What if Margaret Benton had gone on rolling, kilometre after kilometre? What if she had never been found at all?
    That was, of course, what her killer must have hoped for.
    Anthea showed Chris her computer screen. On it was a photograph of a good-looking middle-aged man, with wavy dark hair and thick lips.
    â€˜It’s him.’
    â€˜Good work.’ Chris pulled up a chair. The name under the photo was in a tiny point size. Anthea zoomed in and the man’s face