I NODDED AT THE pistol on his belt. Snarled, ‘You prepared to use that?’
‘Prepared to do whatever the circumstances call for.’
‘They’ll call for that if you expect me to hand Danny over.’
‘He’s absconded from lawful custody.’
‘He oughter be in hospital, not jail.’ I climbed to my feet, shook off dust, tried to shake off some of the anger I could feel rising inside. ‘How the hell’d you find me, anyway?’
‘Getting used to you and your mysterious ways, Emily.’
‘I’m supposed to be impressed?’
‘Wouldn’t expect anything short of the Second Coming to impress you, but I’d be grateful if you’d listen to me.’
‘Listen!’ I fixed him with a glistening stare. ‘I’ve been listening to you for the past month. Listened while you ponced around the country I grew up in like you owned it. Listened while you sent Wireless to his death. Listened while you threw Danny into the same hole. I think I’m done listening to you. Sir.’
‘You were right.’
I don’t know if my jaw actually dropped, but I damn near checked next to my feet. ‘What?’
‘I spoke to my boy.’
‘That’s an improvement.’
He hesitated. Removed his shades.
‘The incident at the sports ground wasn’t as…straightforward as we’d been led to believe.’
‘Nothing is. What’d he tell you?’
‘He says your young friend—Danny—yes, he did stab the white bloke. But apparently the feller attacked him first. No apparent provocation. Jarrod says the boy was just walking past, feller came out of the shadow of the grandstand. The father was coming along behind, tried to help—it was only when he’d been wounded that the boy retaliated. Seems it was with the attacker’s own knife.’
I kicked at the ground with a boot, trying to work this latest piece into the jigsaw.
‘Then it was self-defence?’
‘Looks like it. Doesn’t quite tally with some other accounts we’ve been given, but it sure as hell complicates things.’
‘How’s Bandy?’
‘The father? Still holding his own I think.’
‘Well that’s something.’
He adjusted his belt, cast a calculating eye on me. ‘So where does that leave us, Emily?’
‘Depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On what’s going to happen to Danny.’
‘On the evidence so far, nothing will happen to him. There’ll be an inquest, but unless something else comes along he’ll go free. Mind you,’ the sardonic smile, ‘you’ll be a different matter.’
I’d been wondering about that. Aiding and abetting an escape from custody: what was the going rate for that? Anybody’s guess. Making Cockburn look like a fool? Probably worse. And they still hadn’t told me what sort of shit I was in over killing Paisley.
Right now, though, that was the least of my concerns. If Danny wasn’t bound for the slammer I could take him back, get him some professional help.
There were other things I needed to know.
‘Did you find out who the dead feller was?’
‘We were working on that when I heard that our prisoner had escaped. Seems he worked for the mines.’
‘A miner?’
‘Security.’
I felt the discomfort ripple across my skin. ‘What was his name?’
‘Wellman.’
‘Great name for a dead bloke.’
‘Couple of the constables have had dealings with him—safety reviews, theft reduction strategies, weapon storage inspection, that sort of thing.’
‘Wonder what he was…’
‘Suspect we’ll find he was related to one of the boys in the fight…’
‘You’re related to one of the boys in the fight.’
‘…or just some poor bloody resident who’d had enough.’
I regarded him suspiciously. ‘Enough what?’
He shrugged. ‘Enough of Bluebush.’
‘Enough of the blacks, you mean?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
Talk about banging heads and brick walls.
‘Cockburn, you really don’t get it, do you?’
‘Get what?’
I raised my hand to brush away a fly, wished I could brush away this knuckle-head as easily.
‘These aren’t isolated events.’
‘I told you we’d investigate.’
‘Great investigation it’s going to be if you start with the assumption that a security man trying to kill Danny was just some good old boy taking the law into his own hands. Or that Doc was a silly old coot who got himself hammered in a drunken brawl.’
Cockburn gave a reasonable impression of a budgie straining to pass an emu egg. ‘Not your conspiracy theories again?’
‘There’s too many unexplained things going on: too many deaths, too much mystery.’
‘Deaths? Mystery? Course there are—that’s what this job’s all about. People die all the time. They’re all mysteries until we figure out what happened. And what’s usually happened is that somebody’s said the wrong thing to a feller who’s had a skinful, or caught one of his mates doing the missus.
‘Godsakes Emily,’ he was almost pleading, ‘look at it rationally: you’ve got a couple of people killed in drunken fights a hundred miles apart. Nothing at all to say they’re connected.’
‘That’s a connection in itself: whoever’s behind it’s using the same technique.’
‘Technique?’
‘Trying to disguise their actions; they’ve got something to hide. There’s a pattern here.’
‘You keep saying that.’ He folded his arms and sighed deeply. ‘But you never give me any proof.’
Down on the sand a meat ant was struggling to lug a butterfly ten times its weight. I knew how it felt.
‘It’s not the sort of thing you can prove—not by whitefeller standards, anyway, not yet. But sometimes you just have to trust your gut instincts. Even an instinct’s got a basis in fact; it’s just more subtle.’
‘Subtle! First day I arrived in this damn place, one of your fellow countrymen bashed a mate to death because he’d flogged his roast chicken. That subtle enough for you?’
‘Probably is, in the long run. Reasons for everything…’
He snorted, pushed back his cap. ‘My god, you’re an exasperating woman! You make everything so complicated.’
‘That’s because everything is so complicated!’
Somewhere a bird called. The minatory purr of a peaceful dove. I looked around, suspicious. Nothing to be seen, but my discomfort increased. I turned back to Cockburn.
‘You can’t see the change in something if you don’t know what it looked like in the first place, but if you stay out here long enough you’ll understand. I’m only a beginner myself, but I’ve been round long enough to know that things interconnect—deaths and dreams, watercourses, tracks and plants. Everything. And if something’s out of place…’
‘Emily,’ he interrupted. He’d been shifting restlessly while I spoke, scratching his head. Ignorant bastard might as well have looked at his watch. ‘I honestly regret what happened to you, and I’m sure the prosecutor will take it into account when they’re deciding whether to charge you. But if you blunder about the place seeing conspiracies wherever you look, you’re going to go out of your frigging mind. I’ve been in the force twenty years and believe me: if it’s a choice between cock-up or conspiracy? Go for the cock-up every time.’
What was the point? ‘All right Cockburn, I give up.’ I stepped away, clutched my elbows in frustration. ‘Let’s just quit while we’re behind.’
‘So you’ll come back?’
‘Do I have a choice?’
‘No, but I’d like to keep the trouble to a minimum. You’re up to your neck in it already. Where’s our young friend?’
I pursed my lips, pointed with them. ‘Back at the open cut.’
‘We’ll drive.’
‘Rather walk.’
He shaded his eyes, looked out over the plains, through the shimmering scrub. The cicada scream rose and fell away, the rocks radiated heat. The sand was like burning snow. Cockburn had—unusually—a sheen of perspiration across his brow.
‘Scorchin out there, Emily.’
‘Don’t worry, boss—I’m not going to bugger off again.’
‘We need to get back—half the station’s out looking for you.’
I shrugged. ‘Okay, but drop me off early. I want to tell Danny what’s going on; he’ll jump out of his skin, sees you coming at him in a cop car.’
We walked down to his vehicle in a hot sweat and a cold silence, climbed aboard, drove back towards the mine. I stared at the floor, brooding heavily, wondering whether I’d done the right thing.
Danny was traumatised, but at least he wasn’t about to be thrown back into the slammer. That much I could believe; Cockburn might have the imagination of a termite mound but he was, I sensed, a man of his word.
With a bit of peace and some treatment the boy would be okay. Then once we got things cleared up in town, Danny could make a more easy-going trip back to Stonehouse. Chances were I’d be otherwise engaged. Ultimately, I knew, that would be the best medicine: give the country and its healers—Windmill, Meg, even the wandering ghost of Andulka—time to weave their magic.
‘Somebody up ahead,’ I heard him comment.
I glanced up, made out a figure pottering around the tailings midden near the battery.
‘Gougers up and about by now,’ I suggested. ‘Price of gold the way it is, make a few bucks picking over the old rubbish.’
The man up ahead heard us coming; he paused, rested on his machinery—a jackhammer?—turned his head in our direction.
We were a hundred yards away when something, a shiver of apprehension, flashed through my mind.
‘Hang on a tick, sir.’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Well why do you…?’
‘Just be careful. Something wrong.’
He clucked his tongue. ‘Heard that before, Emily.’
‘And I was right then too.’
As if to emphasise his point, he accelerated. The bloke at the battery watched us draw near. He was tanned and taut, muscular. A bag slung over his shoulder, a lock of orange hair bristling out from his hard hat. Vaguely familiar. No surprises there—I’d come across a lot of the men on the goldfields at one time or another—but something here had set the radar pinging.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. He put the jackhammer down, picked up another implement: some sort of axe?
Cockburn sailed on, oblivious.
Where had I seen this bloke before? We were driving into the shadow of the battery when it hit me: outside Danny’s place, yesterday morning, operating a jackhammer. Come to think of it, what had he been doing working on his own? And on a Sunday morning?
‘Pull up—it’s a trap.’
‘For god’s sake, Emily.’
The fellow on the mullock heap put a foot forward, raised the axe and swung a powerful blow at the rocks by his feet.
A muffled explosion sounded somewhere and the severed ends of a length of wire sprang into the air.
I instinctively followed the line of the longer length, saw that it reached to a point half way up the battery. Heard a peculiar, terrifying sound, a metallic screech, like parrots fighting overhead. The building began to shudder on its foundations.
‘Turn away!’ I threw a hand onto the wheel, trying to force it round.
‘What are you…?’
He shut up when he realised there was a hundred tons of solid steel toppling onto us.