Tahnee speaks to me only after she’s interrogated her horse.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks him, pressing her face into his neck. ‘Were you scared? Were you pleased to see Alice?’
I prick up my ears at this last question, my mind making rapid and unreasonable connections until I remind myself about small communities and everyone knowing everyone else. Shayne ignores Tahnee’s questions and snuffles at her pockets despite the smorgasbord under his feet. He is rewarded with an apple that Tahnee feeds him in two halves, sliced open with a knife that alarmingly she pulls from her back pocket.
‘Sounds like you’ve met the local boys. Delightful, aren’t they? I heard they were especially welcoming to your friend. Arseholes. They’ve given me and Mum the same lip.’ I can see Belinda walking back down the driveway with Alice. Both are coated in dust and ash, which has run in dark brown smears down their arms where they had been splashed with water. Alice wipes a forearm across her forehead, branding herself with mud. I bet we all stink of smoke.
‘You found him then?’ Alice nods at the horse.
‘Lazy sod couldn’t be bothered going any further.’
‘Why would he, looks like he’s found everything he needs right here.’
‘He won’t be staying for much longer. I’ve got to go. Deliveries to make.’ Tahnee unwinds a lead rope from her shoulder and clips it loosely around Shayne’s neck. ‘Come on, you old bastard, let’s put you back in your paddock.’
Alice drives Belinda and me back up the hill to her house, makes us drink more water, and hands us both a bag of lemons from the basket near the front door. I forget to tie the top of mine before I put it in the car and the fruit tumbles loose on the drive home. One hooks under the brake, and I squash it when I stop at an intersection. The citrus hit cuts across the smell of smoke that we’d brought into the car. Belinda breathes it in.
Tell me again how Alice knew we were at Duncan’s place?’ she asks.
‘Rassie told her he saw us.’
‘Yeah, but when?’
‘On the road. He must have been the guy that I nearly reversed into when I missed the turn-off.’
She twists in her seat to face me. ‘But she didn’t actually say that, did she?’
‘Well, no, but …’
‘Because that guy didn’t look like Rassie. Rassie has dark hair, remember? Smiley eyes. We met him at Eric’s thirtieth. The guy in the four-wheel drive was blond. And Rassie would have said hello or waved at least.’
‘Maybe Rassie saw us somewhere else, like at the turn-off to the highway.’
‘Maybe, but did you notice where the four-wheel drive went? It went straight, not up the hill to Alice’s place. That’s the way we took to Duncan’s to rescue the horse. You know where else that road goes? Nowhere, Frances, that road goes nowhere. The guy in the four-wheel drive went to Duncan’s house. He was there while we were in the stables.’
Belinda is right. The road that Alice took to Duncan’s house crossed the riverbed upstream and ended in a stub road in front of the house. ‘What are you saying? Do you think he was the one who set fire to the feedbags?’
‘No, it was those jerks on the bikes who did that. It’s just, doesn’t it give you the creeps to think he was there while we were snooping around?’
I think about that. If the four-wheel-drive guy went to Duncan’s house, it was probably for a legitimate reason. Even prisoners need someone to check that the irrigation is working while they’re not at home. But if he’d seen us, whoever he was, he’d definitely tell Duncan. And Duncan would make a complaint to my boss, probably through the housing minister for greatest impact.
‘If he was there, though, he must have left before the guys on the bikes showed up. I mean, he would have heard them yelling and come out, right?’
‘Not if he didn’t want anyone to know he was there.’
I consider my own snooping around the garden shed and curl my toes. ‘But why would he want to hide? He would have checked that the house was secure, maybe turned the irrigation on and off, and left again. Ten minutes, max. He would have been back on the highway before those dickheads turned up.’
‘Heading toward the prison.’
‘So, what if he was? He hadn’t seen us, and he’d missed all the action. All he’d have to report was that the hedges need pruning.’ I laugh at the prospect of Duncan’s theoretical heavy giving him a garden report, but it comes out dry and my breath smells of smoke.