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| Pendulum clock conceived by Galileo Galilei around 1637, but never completed. (Wikipedia) |
Quite
a number of city folk look on me with something akin to pity when I
tell them that I live in the country, especially when I mention the name
of the town. Odd really as many came from similar situations
themselves. Some faces soften: those who've made it financially; or
those in the process and who plan to return; those who get out of the
rat race and come back into the peace and calm of the rural scene…which
is a fiction really. The pendulum can swing from tranquillity to
disaster just as easily in country districts as in the cities. It did in
my town.
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)
