Clementine woke to the smell of Pocket’s blood on the passenger’s seat. She’d washed the seat cover and scrubbed the seat, but it was still there—faint, accusing.
She rubbed her eyes and checked the clock. How long had she dozed off for? An hour. It was six-thirty, and the sun was on its way up, spreading a soft dawn light over a misty Earlville. She checked the house. No lights in the windows, or in the shed to the side of the house. She checked her phone for new messages. Nothing.
She had driven to Ambrose Macpherson’s address at Speyside Street—the second house from the corner—stopping only for fuel and supplies (a couple of day-old corned beef sandwiches, an iced coffee, a bottle of water and a packet of Tim Tams). She’d gone the back way, and pulled up in the street that adjoined his. Two flowering wattle trees made a wall of foliage on the corner. She parked close enough so she could just see Brose’s house and hoped to God her beaten-up old Commodore wouldn’t attract any attention.
It must have been about nine last night when she’d seen a short, stocky man in jeans and a jumper come out of the front of the house. He had opened the roller door on the shed halfway and then made a call on his mobile from the driveway. He looked like he was waiting for something. Just after he’d pocketed his phone, a vehicle approached from the other end of Speyside Street. A blue ute. The blue ute.
The man checked up and down the street, opened the roller door to its full height, moving swiftly. The ute rolled in and he walked in behind it, quickly sliding the roller door closed. The driver wore a beanie and had the bulk of a body builder. Not enough light to make out his features.
She’d tried to stay awake by eating and drinking the supplies she’d bought at the fuel station, but she’d dozed off two or three times.
Smears of orange and pink preceded the sun still hidden behind the ridge. Around her the front lawns were covered in a fine dusting of frost. It looked like it would be a cold, clear day. Semi-final day. She went through the starting eighteen in her head, then the match-ups she’d worked out for the Digby Dingoes’ key players, pulling the blanket around her more tightly and checking her phone again. No new texts. The last one yesterday afternoon had been from Torrens, telling her he’d been out searching for Clancy but had gone home after dark when the search was suspended for the night. Hundreds of people had turned up, he said, combing the creek, searching the grassy ditches either side of the main road to the north and the dense bush to the west of Katinga.
She went over and over her conversations with the Holts, searching for any clue about where Clancy might be. Bernadette’s promotion depended on keeping her skeleton in the closet quiet. But to go to these lengths?
Clem ran through the details of a few recent corporate sex scandals in her head. All men in positions of power—executives, representatives of their organisations, of whom a higher standard was expected. Was it their gender or their power that made it scandalous? Either way, Bernadette was right to fear the publicity. Unless she had friends in very high places, she would almost certainly find herself shuffled out the door of CTS. There was significant wealth on offer for any senior executive in a company about to list on the ASX. She thought of Clancy and Melissa’s housing commission home. The contrast disgusted her.
Now here she was and Clancy abducted. Abducted. The word stuck in her head. A word she’d never thought she’d have need of. Abducted by violent men. Men who would smash a dog’s leg with a tomahawk, stub a cigarette out on a man’s arm, make threats against unborn babies.
It dawned on her—God, Clementine, you think you can do this on your own? Maybe she should tell the police. She fought with the idea. Yesterday she hadn’t wanted to distract them from the search, and today, in the cold light of dawn, the fear of dropping Torrens in it loomed large. She would be laying a trail for them, taking them back to the Audi job, the clean-up afterwards when she’d overheard Gerard and Brose, the burglary, the theft of the USB sticks and the letterbox bomb. All of it leading them to Torrens, like an arrow to a bullseye—and what an easy target he would be for them with his history.
Another life she would ruin.
And all because of a hunch—for that was all it was at this stage, a hunch that perhaps Ambrose Macpherson had kidnapped Clancy.
At that moment she saw movement at the house, the front door opening, Brose walking over to the shed in jeans and a black leather jacket, a backpack slung over his shoulder. He turned the key in the side door of the shed, checking the street before he entered. She saw a light come on inside, shining through the cracks in the door. The other man, the ute driver, emerged from the house. He wore Doc Martens boots, jeans and a hoodie covering his head. She slunk lower in the seat as he looked up and down the street on his way towards the shed.
The roller door began crawling its way up. She threw off the blanket, checked the Commodore was in neutral. She could see the second man’s boots and calves and the back of the ute. A silver Harley appeared, its exhaust blurting and puffing. Brose with his hands high on the hooped handlebars, boots forward on the pegs, rolling casually onto the street. No sign of Clancy.
She turned the key in the ignition. The Commodore spluttered and stalled in the cold. Ohbloody hell, come on. Start, you mongrel. She turned the key again, this time pumping the accelerator. The engine kicked in just as the motorbike swung right out of the driveway, away from her and towards the hill at the other end of the street.
She inched the Commodore forward, waiting for the second man to emerge. He was still inside the shed as the roller door started to rattle its way down. Then the side door opened and he stepped out of the darkness into the morning light, hood pushed back, head shaven. Red Flanno. Jason Clegg. The Earlville gang, connected to Ambrose. Her heart was pounding, and she fought off a sudden desire to turn around and head straight home to Katinga.
Clegg went back into the house. Creeping forward to the corner, she swung left and rolled past number 12 at a casual pace, watching for movement. The windows were heavily curtained. She increased her speed, then pressed down hard on the accelerator as she hit the base of the hill.
Approaching the crest, she saw the motorbike taking a right turn three blocks away. Down the hill and the Commodore was up to 110, then heavy on the brakes and down the gears, before taking the same right turn.
She caught a glimpse of the bike as it leaned over left, disappearing up a side street. Brose was in a hurry or just enjoying his Harley. She planted her foot down hard, hit the brakes as late as she dared, tyres screeching as she swung left into the corner, thankful that under his helmet and with the sound of the Harley, he wouldn’t hear a thing.
The road ahead stretched straight to a T-junction in the distance. The bike was moving very fast, half a kilometre away now, slowing for the intersection. Brose took a right, leaning into the corner.
She moved through the gears, revving hard between each change, the Commodore leaping forward as she released the clutch. Approaching the intersection, she saw the sign pointing right to the Earlville airport. Right hand down, tyres screaming, the wagon skidded across the asphalt, flicking momentarily into the gravel on the shoulder. She straightened, powered forward, a cloud of dust behind her and a faint odour of burning rubber wafting through the cabin. Adrenaline tingled through her hands as she gripped the wheel.
She had the old Commodore up to 170 now. It really seemed to come alive, flying over the potholes as if they weren’t there.
She caught a glimpse of the motorbike flashing in the low rays of the rising sun as Brose rounded a bend up ahead and slipped behind a row of trees. She started counting. Twenty seconds before she reached the same bend. The turn pulled out into a long straight stretch. She got a good view of the motorbike up ahead—Brose was enjoying his early-morning ride, gunning down the empty highway.
She took the Commodore back up to 170, foot flat to the boards.
He took the next curve to the right and disappeared behind a strip of bushland that marked the start of the hills around the north of Earlville. She started counting again, arrived at the bend twenty-four seconds later.
They were winding through the hills now. She ignored the 50-kilometre speed sign and the single white line down the middle of the road, hugging each curve tight on the wrong side of the road, holding her breath for that moment of blindness, breathing out again as she saw the empty road slithering on ahead to the next bend. The Commodore swung wildly as it rounded each turn, then bounded forward as she pushed down on the accelerator.
For the next five kilometres, she saw nothing of the motorbike on the winding road. Pulling out of the final bend and pointing the Commodore down the hill, she peered ahead anxiously up the straight. Nothing. Shit. The road was straight for at least a kilometre before it twisted left behind a large shearing shed.
She dashed to the first crossroad and slowed, scanning left and right. Nothing. She slammed her foot down again, passed the airport sign.
She slowed again, checking left down the airport road. Away in the distance something flashed silver, like a mirror in the sunlight. She wrenched the steering wheel down, feeling the rear wheels slide into the dirt as the arse slid out. She relaxed into the slide, allowing the car to slow a little before straightening and pushing the pedal as hard as she could.
She hit the sixty-kilometre zone at ninety and followed the road that ran around the northern end of the airport car park before easing into the long curve that would take her towards the terminal building.
She looked across the car park. It was long and narrow, faded white lines dividing each bay, about two-thirds empty. No motorbikes in the first section. She slowed and drew close to the rear of a white Volvo moving at a leisurely pace up the road, a Panama hat and a tartan rug on the rear dash. She kept slowing, slowed some more, ground her teeth. Come on, Grandpa.
As the Volvo inched towards the turn into the drop-off road at the front of the terminal, she caught sight of a motorbike in the middle of the car park. Sports bike. Bright red fuel tank.
The Volvo paused to give way to some imaginary traffic and then crept forward, Clementine following close behind. She scanned the length of the road. No Harley. The terminal stretched low and narrow to her left. A young couple in baggy clothes with lots of pockets and huge backpacks ambled along the footpath to her right.
Grandpa came to a stop at the pedestrian crossing. She drummed the steering wheel with her thumb impatiently, eyes crawling over the car park as far as she could see. An older woman wearing a puffed blue parka and hauling a large case behind her began struggling over the crossing.
No motorbikes in the middle section of the car park. She started on the last section. An old Landcruiser was reversing out of a space in the furthest corner. As it rolled away, she could see the space behind it—and the Harley, with its big looping handlebars and silver tank. Her heart started thumping, she blinked, checked—definitely Brose’s Harley. She scoured the car park between the bike and the crossing. A figure appeared from behind the middle row of cars. Short, stocky, bald head, black leather jacket. He was metres from the crossing, metres from seeing her.
The old lady in the parka had reached the other side of the crossing and was hauling her case up the ramp onto the footpath. There were no more pedestrians in sight. Oh God, Grandpa, stay where you are, stay where you are. She saw the wispy white hair on his head swing to the right, towards the car park. Brose was three strides from the crossing. With the courtesy of another era, Grandpa waited. Brose gave him a nod as he stepped purposefully onto the road.
She pretended to reach for something on the passenger-side floor of the car, stayed down and counted to ten, then peeked up over the dashboard. Brose was through the automatic doors of the terminal and dear old Grandpa had started to roll forward across the crossing.
Clementine entered the terminal from the door farthest from the check-in area. There were a handful of people at the counters, a larger group sitting at the two departure gates and a queue at the hole-in-the-wall cafe just opposite the gates. Brose was third in line, his back to her.
She checked the flight monitor. There was the 8.10 am to Goorinda, arriving 9.05 am, and an 11.30 am to Sydney, then nothing until 3 pm. She googled Goorinda on her phone. A regional town east of central New South Wales, just under five hours’ drive away according to Google Maps.
Had to be the early flight he was taking. No other reason to get up at the crack of dawn. She stood there, staring at the screen. It was 7.13 am. Just under fifty minutes before departure and less than seven hours until the siren started the semi-final. She checked online for flights out of Goorinda airport. Nothing until four o’clock in the afternoon. Her head dropped. Her whole body felt hollow.
She went outdoors and took a deep lungful of the chill air, hurrying away from the activity at the front of the terminal, circumnavigating a family with four daughters, all with blond, plaited pigtails and identical Barbie suitcases. At the end of the building was a low bench hard up against the concrete wall of the terminal facing a gravelled yard, cigarette butts strewn around it. She dropped her bag, sat down, staring at her feet.
She had staked out Brose’s house hoping to find some sign of Clancy or something that might link Brose with Clancy’s disappearance at least. She’d thought Brose had to be involved. And she still thought that, but nothing last night or this morning had brought her any closer to confirming it. She’d hoped, when he’d turned off at the airport road, that perhaps he was picking someone or something up, pushed the thought of him actually flying somewhere out of her head. And now, here she was, still no closer to knowing whether he was going on a holiday to visit his mother or on his way to wherever they’d taken Clancy.
She went through all the things that had happened that suggested Brose was involved. She could not shake the feeling that this was the man who would lead her to Clancy.
Her throat felt dry. Thirty-four years without a final, fifty years without a premiership. All the nights in front of the computer planning, strategising, all the cold, wet training sessions, the sweat, the bruises, the knocks, the elation, the disappointment.
She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes. The cold seeped through her jumper and crept into her bones. She stayed there, wanting the cold to hurt her, burn her. She imagined the players, the looks on their faces. She hadn’t missed a single training session, let alone a game. She pressed her back harder against the wall, her hair catching and pulling in the tiny cracks in the concrete blocks.
It wasn’t just the players—it was the whole town, and their big, patient hearts. Mrs Lemmon, Wakely, the Floods, all of them. The years of drought and of plenty, of drought again, then rain, and then the mine closing.
Maybe they’ll be okay without me, thought Clementine. It’s not impossible. They’d had a win without Clancy last week; they could win without her. Sellingham knows the patterns, he’s captain, he can be leader for the day. She could ring him, take him through the match-ups and her game plan in detail.
She opened her eyes. The sun had lifted clear of the hills on the horizon. It burned gold against the early blue of the sky and pushed a pink blush up through the thin strands of cloud above.
She thought through the possibilities. Following Brose was the only thing she could think of that might lead her to Clancy. But it could be nothing—he could be going on a business trip, a holiday, visiting family for all she knew. Hardly convincing for the police unless she told them about Brose’s conversation with Gerard and the CCTV footage.
She thought of Melissa, her baby due any day now. She imagined her in a hospital bed, cradling a beautiful newborn with Clancy’s big brown eyes, swaddled in cotton blankets. She saw Melissa surrounded by family—her mum, sisters, brothers, cousin Tash, the aunties. Everyone but Clancy.
The gravel at her feet was dry and cold, the edge of each pebble clear and crisp in the fresh morning light. A magpie landed on the fence at the end of the yard, looked left, looked right, threw his head back and warbled.
She knew what she had to do.
She walked into the terminal, through the automatic doors, and passed her credit card and driver’s licence across the counter. ‘I need a seat on the Goorinda flight, please, as far away from my boss as possible. I spend all week with him and I don’t want to ruin my weekend.’
‘Of course. His name?’ asked the smiling woman at the check-in counter.
‘Mr Ambrose Macpherson.’
She waited outside on the bench seat in the gravelled yard, eating the last of the Tim Tams. First she texted Gerard: Sick. Can’t make it. Have briefed Sello.
Then she rang Sellingham. He was shocked, distraught at first, but she told him to grow up, took him through the game plan, the match-ups.
Then her phone rang. Rowan. He was at the cottage. He’d dropped by to check on the shed roof after the wind the night before, make sure it was solid. Wanted to wish her well for the semi-final.
‘Want me to sort out the glass in the front door?’ he asked.
‘Can you do glass?’
‘Yeah. Piece of piss,’ he said. He’d come next week on Wednesday to fit it. ‘So where are you, anyway?’ he asked.
She cast around for an excuse. ‘Already in town. Having breakfast at the Wombat Cafe, going over the game plan.’
‘Ngh,’ he grunted, ‘that’s my local. Didn’t see you there. Recommend the teacake.’ He hung up.
Rowan would be at the game. He would know she’d lied. But he wasn’t one to disclose secrets, thank goodness.
She texted Torrens next: Sick. Can’t make it. Sello’s in charge. Help him out—keep the boys together. She felt her insides tear apart, had a sudden urge to scream.
She had left Jenny till last. Can’t make it. Told everyone I’m sick. Will explain later. Can you check in on Pocket? He has one antibiotic twice a day. They’re in the fridge. Key’s under the flowerpot, front door.
She thought about Pocket, felt a wave of loneliness closely followed by fear. She was on her own, pursuing a man who, as far as she knew, was a brutal criminal, and no one, not a soul, knew where she was.
She picked up the phone again, dialled Rowan’s number.
‘I lied. I’m not at the cafe. I’m at the Earlville airport. I’m booked on the 8.10 flight to Goorinda.’
‘What the hell?’
‘I can’t explain, but I won’t be at the game and I’ve told everyone I’m sick. I just wanted someone to know where I actually was.’
‘Why are you going to Goorinda? It’s the semi-final, for Christ’s sake.’
She wanted to tell him, to unload the whole story on him in one big torrent, just to have one person in the world know what she was carrying around, but she said nothing.
‘Come on,’ Rowan said. ‘What’s going on? You can tell me.’
She heard the concern in his voice, knew that he sensed her fear—in her words, her silence, everything she did and didn’t say.
She hung up.