After I drop off Harry, I bring Mahoney and Higgins back to Miners Creek with me to help investigate. I get Mahoney to search the bushes. Taking Higgins with me, I walk down to the Aboriginal camp, about half a mile down the creek.
They’re not allowed to live in the town, so they’re pretty much confined to camping along the creek bed. It’s a pitiful and sorry place: forty-odd humans, squeezed into corrugated iron humpies. The only running water is the creek, and there are no toilets. A lot of the children die before their fifth birthday. Some of the women work as domestics and their men are mostly out on the stations. Others have taken hard to the drink. Because of that, the camp has more than its fair share of fights.
It’s a place we never look forward to coming to. The boys and I find ourselves out here fairly regularly, whenever there’s been a drunken disturbance or when we’re taking one of their children away, and that makes me sad. I don’t enjoy taking kids away; I don’t think it’s my job. The sound of children screaming for their parents is enough to break a man.
Last time the government asked me to do it, I told them that there were no kids left in the camp. And that was the honest truth; there weren’t any when we got there. If the government wants to take children off their parents and place them in foster homes, then let the bloody politicians come here and do it themselves. They reckon the kids will have a better chance in life, but I reckon a child’s place is with its family, no matter what. The politicians can say whatever they want, but I know why they do it: they think the Aborigines are dying out and they want the children integrated with the rest of us. I’d sooner they were up front about it. If they’d asked me, I’d have told the government to let them be, and to give these people a decent place to live.
If only they’d ask.
Yeah, it’s a sad place full of broken people.
The camp is quiet when we get there. One of the camp dogs barks as we approach. There’s no one about, except for three old blokes sitting around a fire drinking tea. I can smell damper cooking on the fire, but I don’t see any women or kids. They’ve probably gone bush thinking we’re here to take another child.
We walk over to the old blokes and they’re doing their best to ignore us. The one called Bobby’s always in charge. He’s smart, informed, suspicious. I crouch down on my haunches while Higgins stands arrow-straight. A group of skinny camp dogs wander over to check us out; they aren’t afraid, even though we sometimes have to shoot them dead when they wander off to hunt. Silly buggers.
‘Something wrong, Boss?’ Bobby finally asks me. He doesn’t look at me. It’s their way. ‘Look around. No trouble here today. Pretty quiet here, Boss. Thanks for letting us know you were coming.’ He grins as he swigs his tea.
‘It’s nothing about you blokes,’ I reply. ‘We found a dead baby down near the old plant. The body’s too decayed to work out whose baby it is. I’m wondering if you mob know anything about it?’
He throws me a quick glance and a frown comes over his face. He doesn’t answer me.
‘Not one of your women’s babies, is it?’
‘Don’t know, Boss,’ he replies vaguely.
I growl, ‘Come on now, Bobby, don’t start acting all bloody vague with me. Is it one of your babies? If it is one of your women, we’re worried that she may need medical help.’
He’s as silent as the grave.
Higgins reaches down and grabs him by the collar. ‘Speak up, and don’t play the dumb blackfella with us. Sergeant Furey is asking you a question.’
‘Back in line, Constable! Go and check the camp,’ I bark, and he leaves.
‘That bloke, he’s pretty wild.’ Bobby laughs. ‘I thought he might give me a flogging.’
‘Come on, Bobby, you’re not in trouble, nor is anyone in the camp. I just want to know if you know anything about this dead baby.’
He looks at the other men. They just nod back, but don’t reply.
‘That baby isn’t ours,’ he says finally. ‘Honest truth.’
‘Are you sure, you’re not having me on?’ I ask. ‘Because if you’re giving me the run-around, I’ll take you down the station and throw you in the slammer until you start talking.’
‘No, no, Boss,’ he splutters, ‘I don’t want to go to that lockup. That place gives me the willies.’
‘So you’re telling me the truth?’
‘For sure, Boss, for sure. We never heard or saw no baby there, or we would have told you.’
‘Right. And you never saw anyone with a baby down that part of the creek?’
‘No, no. We don’t like going down that part of the creek anyway,’ he continues, ‘no fish there and we don’t want to see people doing…you know…having…’
I finish off his sentence. ‘Fornicating.’
‘Yeah, that stuff. Makes us shamed to look.’
‘I see.’ I stand up as Higgins returns to the campfire.
‘I can’t see anything, Sergeant,’ he says.
‘Thanks, Bobby.’ I add, ‘Let me know if you blokes remember anything. All right?’
‘Yes, Boss. No worries, Boss.’
We walk away from the camp.
‘Higgins,’ I say, ‘a word of advice for you: control your temper. If you don’t, you’ll never go any further up the ladder.’
‘I thought the Abo needed a bit of prodding,’ he replies. ‘You know how they are. Act like they don’t know anything, but of course they do. Shifty bastards.’
‘Listen here and listen well: if I want you to do something like that, I’ll ask you to. You’re to leave the questioning to me. There’s a time to go the heavies, there’s a time not to. Learning when to do what comes with experience.’
‘Yes, Sergeant Furey.’
‘And as a punishment for overstepping the mark, you can clean the police ute.’
‘I won’t do it again, Sergeant.’ He’s shamefaced.
By the time we get back, Mahoney has already wrapped the body in a towel and placed it in a small box in the back of the ute.
‘Did you find anything?’ I ask him.
‘Not a thing, Sarge.’
He’s looking green around the gills. ‘You don’t look well, Mahoney. Go and have a good chunder. You’ll be right after that.’
‘No, it’ll settle,’ he replies. ‘Not easy looking at a dead child.’
‘Better get used to it, son. This won’t be the last dead baby you’ll see.’
For all his willpower, he rushes away and vomits under a tree anyway. I shake my head. Can’t remember the last time I did that.
We drop the body off at the morgue and ask if Doc McDonald is around. Apparently, he’s away until tomorrow. I’m not upset. Even for a hard old cop like me, it would be a bit rugged to do the post mortem on the same day. I can’t say that too much rattles me these days, but the sight of that tiny, mutilated creature has shaken me up more than I’m willing to admit. What gets me, is trying to figure out what kind of woman does such a thing.
I’d sooner get home early, and see Gracie and Mikey instead.