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| Pendulum clock conceived by Galileo Galilei around 1637, but never completed. (Wikipedia) |
The bank's still there but not the blood stains. They went with the blue carpet and some of the fittings ripped out during the alterations afterwards. Working in the district forensic laboratory for some years I'd processed photographs and items of many crimes. I've seen what bullets can do to a human body when delivered at very close quarters. It was horrific what one bullet did to the victim who survived.
Understandable, then, that customers and bank staff required counsellors to assist them and members of the police and St John's Ambulance to cope with it all. They did their best but some things can't be altered. Not with counselling. Not with the passing of time, not even when the sun shines, when the streets are peaceful or when people pass their daily lives with the appearance of quiet assurance. Ask those affected on that day and they'll tell you that a recurring nudge from their subconscious reminds them of the peculiar swing of the pendulum.
Before 'that day' everything about the bank had suggested permanence: the quietness within its solid structure; the carpet soft underfoot; the neat uniforms of the staff; and the calm appearance of the manager. It was the same each day of the week. You could bank on it, as the saying goes. This section of the counter was for the ordinary public, that section for business people with their canvas bags of cheques and cash, and over there was for other business and where you made enquires. Folk who'd ‘made it’ ordered their travellers cheques and foreign currency there, all smiles and quietly confident in possession of their wealth. A great time for them to be alive and with further excitements just around the corner. (Further excitement. Yes indeed.)
Each locality has its quota of odd people of varying ages, backgrounds and persuasion adding their distinctive flavour, even a richness of one kind or another. In our town there was a woman, some called a medium, who could be counted on to say or do something beyond the norm during the different phases of the moon. On this day, when no one could have guessed how she knew, her voice urgent and insistent said there was a foulness and smell of death in the air. Then, in the same breath, likened it to the horde of pests awaiting release from Pandora's box. She was going on about innocent people being shot when the young receptionist put the phone down. ‘I thought it was a hoax,’ she sobbed later, when the editor heard about it.
But by then it was too late.
An unusual kind of excitement was brooding in the kitchen of the home of the Bowden family, not far out of town that day. It coincided exactly with the phone call from the medium to the local press. At the Bowden house, Scott's mother was sick to her stomach. Her son's normally warm personality had changed, with an abruptness that sent her reeling. Breakfast had been bad enough, she just couldn't do anything right for him. It was more than just a bad temper, it was the mood changes that began to cause her serious concern.
Then, about mid-morning she'd said something that tipped the scales the wrong way and the air became heated with tension. It was a great pity, but understandable when the facts became known. At a friend's place the night before his drinks had been spiked, for laughs apparently. Whatever the substance was, it set in motion an outrage that filled many people with horror and despair, especially the parents of teenagers. The fools who'd wanted a few laughs, if they got them, was actually the one responsible for the deaths and heartbreaks that followed.
The change began in the early hours of the following morning, Scott struggling with his fuddled mind trying to make sense of what was happening to him. Waves of panic and alarm sent him rushing into bursts of wild activity, little of it balanced or coherent before gradually becoming quiet again. A quietness which progressed to an unnatural icy coolness suggestive of a mind teetering on the brink of insanity. He'd left the house by the time his mother had called him for lunch, and she hesitated a while before phoning the police to tell them of her concerns. Her recorded message was played back two hours later.
Junior bank teller, Grant Haskell, was a spirited young man, who possessed along with his good looks a bubbling kind of personality which most people, especially other teens, found attractive. He also had considerable potential which the bank was keen to nurture. Scott Bowden knew Grant. They'd played basket-ball and been on the same school camps together. They were friends but not close friends. Yet two witnesses were convinced he'd shown no recognition of Grant as Scott had rested the barrel of the rifle on the counter. They saw him survey the bank staff, their eyes mesmerised by the rifle moving backwards and forwards in an arc in front of them. They'd watched as Grant moved slowly from behind the counter, attempting a smile in the hope Scott would recognise him and stop the madness.
As Grant opened his mouth to speak to Scott, the barrel of the rifle wavered slightly up and to the left. The crack of the shot stunned everyone and they all said how, in a kind of slow motion, they watched in disbelief as the bullet entered just below Grant’s jaw to come out a fraction of second later by the side of his left eye. Just before Grant crumpled to the ground, there was a moment when the skin and bone in between burst open and a gaping hole pumping with blood appeared in the side of his face. Moments after the blast, Scott appeared to regain a brief semblance of normality but still he gunned down a customer and a bystander outside who'd tried to prevent him leaving. He was caught, tried and sentenced.
Our laboratory supplied the evidence at the trial, establishing that a drug found on the premises of one of the party-goers was the same as that found in Scott's brain at the post mortem. The two deaths in our small town and one bank teller dreadfully disfigured was news-worthy for a while. You're probably thinking, 'I've heard it all before', except it didn't end there; there was another peculiar swing to this particular pendulum.
At a manager’s meeting, the local bank manager, Mr Reginald Naylor, felt that reconstructive plastic surgery to Grant Haskell's face would be a constant reminder of the murder and therefore offensive to some people who relied on the bank. The general feeling was it would be better for Grant to be away from it all, and they left Mr Naylor to sort it out from there. It might have helped if he'd talked to Grant, however, as Grant had the potential to rise well above his own position. Mr Naylor felt that just wouldn’t be right. To give himself time to sort things out, he gave Grant a month's paid leave, after his long spell in hospital and reconstructive surgery, and he made his plans.
The letter was on his desk when Grant, almost restored to his former identity but with horrific signs on the suffering he had endured still evident, returned from the hospital and his extended leave. He was warmly welcomed back by his colleagues who had been regular visitors to him throughout his rehabilitation. Grant had been and integral part of the bank team, even as a junior teller, and the bank had always stressed the importance of that. They'd had regular get-togethers, week-end seminars, a mixture of intensive lectures and fun-times to achieve that end, and they'd succeeded. Loyalty to each other went hand in hand with loyalty to the bank. So you can understand what Grant thought of loyalty when he opened the letter terminating his employment.
Some weeks later, Gwyneth White's dog attracted her attention to a patch of bush on her family farm. It was the body of Grant; it was presumed he'd gone missing in the bush not long after receiving his termination letter. Searchers had given up after several extended sweeps of the area failed to find evidence of him being there, and yet there he was, not far from his home town.
Now what will happen at the next swing of the pendulum do you think?
Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)
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