Cobram
Saturday 17 September
The boom had been deafening. Patto reared, wrenching the reins as Fitz held on tight. The last thing he wanted was to be chasing a spooked horse in the dead of night—or worse, losing the horse altogether.
No more noise. He’d calmed Patto, secured him. Then he’d found his swag, dragged it to where he’d tied the horse and made a bed, the saddle under his head, the bags kept close by. When he woke at dawn, his sleep having been fractured, light, he saw that the firecracker wasn’t the only thing that had been tossed. There was a small rock with a paper wrapped around it, tied with string.
His lip curled. Such sophistication. He didn’t have to read it to know what it’d say. As soon as it was light, sure enough, he saw that a bold, literate hand had written, ‘Get on your way.’
He tucked the note in his pocket and decided John didn’t need to see it. Not yet anyway. He lit the fire, took his time making a billy tea and ate a few bites of hot bully beef straight from the tin. Squatting by the fire, poking the glowing sticks and coals, he wondered if he was being watched now. Couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t mean much. He doused the fire then packed the horse. Time to head for the Cobram Courier, then drop into the post office to see if Raff had made contact. Fitz was keen to write the story about Meryl Bayley, but would have to cool his heels until he could tell Evie about her sister.
He and Patto picked their way up the bank to where Fitz thought the rider had been. Nothing but hoofprints were in the dirt. It could’ve been any number of local fellas who’d know their way around in the dark, but it must have been someone who’d seen him find his camp.
My money’s on Haines.
Patto sauntered through town, Fitz on his back, past early traders who exchanged nods in greeting as they swept the footpaths in front of their stores. He pulled up at the Cobram Courier, tied Patto out the front. Opening the door, he gave a silent sigh of relief. At last.
‘Are you the editor?’ he asked a young man in a dark apron, his hands and fingernails stained black.
‘He’s gone home for breakfast.’
‘I’m Mr Fossey,’ Fitz said.
‘Ah, Mr Fossey.’ Recognising the name, the man’s eyes widened. ‘The roving reporter. It’s grand to meet you, Mr Fossey. I’m Ned Wilson.’
Pleasantries aside, Fitz didn’t want to linger over stories of his known exploits. ‘You might be aware, Mr Wilson, that I tend to keep out of the limelight, so if you wouldn’t mind keeping my visit to yourself …?’
‘Course. Absolutely.’
‘Your editor might like to handle this himself. Would you see that only he opens it?’ Fitz passed over the envelope. Now he was here, and seeing the fervent light shining from Mr Wilson’s eyes, he wished he’d simply shoved his article anonymously under the door.
‘I certainly will, Mr Fossey. Keep up the good work.’
Fitz turned to leave. ‘Not another soul, mind,’ he said and waited for the typesetter to nod. ‘Good day.’
He was quick to remount Patto, and wondered if someone crooked might have seen him in the newspaper office. Too late now. At least his letter would get to whom it was intended.
At the post office, Raff’s telegram was waiting for ‘Mr Fossey’. Typical Raff, the barest shred of information: On my way, he’d written. He could be anywhere between Ballarat and here. They’d talked about him getting to Echuca and taking a paddle-steamer upriver the same as Fitz had done. Either way, riding or riverboating, Raff would still be at least a couple of days away. He tucked the telegram into his pocket and turned to leave.
‘Mr Fossey.’ The clerk had called him back. ‘We have a package here for you, too.’
Fitz took the bulky package. He presumed it would be the latest Ballarat newspapers that featured his stories, and others on the police corruption debacle. The bundle was tied firmly with heavy string and by the postmark had arrived late last week. It wouldn’t be completely up to date, but better than nothing.
He headed outside for Patto and jammed the package into a saddlebag, keen to find a quiet place where he could spread out the newspapers and get lost in them. He could’ve written one more article, damning McCosker with information so far not aired, but he’d rather someone else reported it. Shirker. He’d do it if no one else had but now he had other concerns. All very well to be on the side of the right, but being righteous often meant you had to duck your head. If McCosker got to him, he might lose his head altogether.
The story he’d uncovered was just that. Someone in McCosker’s loose troop of followers, made up of bad police and crooks on the street, had lost his head. It was made to look as if a train had gone over him; maybe it had, but not before someone had wielded a big enough knife, something sword-like, to execute the man. The head had been sheared clean off and had rolled from the tracks into the mud and grass seeds. The rest of the body sustained no damage; it lay as a headless whole between the rail lines. It had been discovered just out of Ballarat on the Bendigo line, but no train driver had reported any incident. The violence of the act had sent shock waves through the police force.
Reporting on the grisly find had been one of Fitz’s jobs. He’d seen worse, but those had been real accidents. Not premeditated decapitation.
The public were yet to learn it had been no accident. To most people, it might have been a drunk who’d misjudged his walk home from the pub, but no one in McCosker’s camp would’ve thought that for a minute. McCosker meant it to look deliberately staged. Don’t snitch was the message.
The police got the message all right and suddenly ranks closed. Suspects outside the force with even a smudge on their file had been pulled in for a roasting, those who showed nerves were weeded out, scrutinised, thumped around. Some of them were yanked from their beds by the scruff of the neck. Then a gold merchant had been killed defending his shop, just as the squeeze had begun, but the man’s wife wouldn’t testify against the offenders. McCosker had then run to ground, leaving barely a trail.
A fortnight later, Fitz had received a note written in dainty cursive, an explosive statement from an anonymous witness to the gold merchant’s murder. ‘I trust you, Mr O’Shea, to deliver justice.’ Strangely, as it turned out, the merchant’s widow and her children had left town in a hurry at the same time. He’d kept the note with him; didn’t want it left with anyone else, especially the police right now. So he hoped the merchant’s death had been taken up by a city reporter, if not the city’s police. Otherwise … He shook his head. Otherwise, he’d have to use the note sent to him and do something about it.
The newspapers safely stored in the saddlebags, Fitz loosened Patto’s reins and mounted, heading for the pub. After that, he’d find his brother. Might be time to take up space at John’s place so that whoever had chucked that firecracker would leave him alone.