Show Me the Sky - Nicholas Hogg [27]
To: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com
Date: Wed 18 Jan 2005 17:48 + 1300
Worried?! I’ve been worried sick. Really, to just vanish in transit like that! I don’t know what you’re up to, but you could’ve told me something.
Roberts had us in his office the moment we were through customs. He really put the boot in. Surprised you didn’t hear him bellowing, even in Australia. Then I was personally summoned for ‘a little chat’. Not quite an interrogation, but warnings of reprimands and the CPS if you were to contact me and I didn’t pass on any information. He even did a good cop, bad cop routine, starting with concerns about your mental health, telling me he understood the pressures of the job, of failing on such a high profile case, before pushing the threats of a disciplinary.
And I am worried about you, Jim. But remember, I’m here. Call me on my cell, or give me a number I can reach you on there. Is your mobile switched off?
Please write soon,
xx
From: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com
To: anna_m@hotmail.com
Date: Wed 18 Jan 2005 18:11 + 1300
Anna, I can’t call you because … You’d probably talk me out of what I’m doing. I have a lead. Maybe. And that could be a big maybe. One way of checking it out is if you could pay a trip for me to the London Mission Society records in Russell Square. Check whether the name Patrick McCreedy is connected with the Reverend Thomas. Turns out the Cal Smith guy who found the manuscript discovered more than just a journal buried in the sand. His ex-girlfriend, a Monique Cabanne, now living in Coober Pedy, told me he ‘saw’ this man called McCreedy.
Now, if this was just a tale from the mouth of a drunkard or drugged-up kid, I’d laugh it off as fantasy. I’ve had a lifetime among crooks and liars, where even the guilty, stunned by the creativity of their own lie, believe themselves innocent. But Monique was adamant. She believed what Cal had told her in his final letter. I believed her. When she went to get the letter, it was gone. The only other person who’d seen it was a man named Philip Bell, introducing himself as a long lost friend of Cal.
As we both know, in this line of business, coincidence is rarely innocence. When I got to the convict archives in Canberra, he’d already beaten me to the McCreedy file. Now, and you’ll probably think I’m losing it when I tell you this, but he matched the physical outline of Billy K. Could he be making a pilgrimage to the site of the book that fledged his wings?
Worth a thought?
From: anna_m@hotmail.com
To: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com
Date: Thu 19 Jan 2005 10:49 + 1300
Yes, it is worth a thought, definitely. But look, Jim. I’ll help you with whatever you need, but I also need some love from you, a little something to show that Billy K isn’t the only person you’re thinking of!!! I’m more than just another officer!
Anyway, the LMS archive has nothing on McCreedy and Rev. Thomas associating, but Thomas’s final correspondence, dated 4 August 1839, certainly demonstrates how keen he was to leave Australia: ‘Please note, that although I have been forced to humble myself for the passage to England, seeking both fare and leave of my duties sooner than the agreed tenure of my Sydney parish, it is merely an admission of my failing health, not a dereliction of duty.’ The letter is brief, and apart from wishing the LMS to arrange his travel arrangements with some haste, he notably warns of, ‘nefarious forces in the South Pacific, who, by hook or crook, would wish that the Lord Jesus remain a stranger on those heathen shores.’
But this archive has been outshone by Google. Yes, pixels beat paper on this one. I spent a while on the web searching for McCreedy. Well, maybe no more than name sharing chance, but in 1841 the Reverend Patrick McCreedy Orphanage was founded in Mombassa. It’s still there today. Does this help with anything?
Here in my darkened flat, drizzling outside, the only light the glow of the screen.
Thinking of you,
A x
From: paraphernalia1278@yahoo.com
To: anna_m@hotmail.com
Date: Thu 19 Jan 2005 12:17 + 1300
Thank you, Anna.