7 p.m.
Walker goes to the pub to order takeaway meals for himself and Grace, neither of them in the mood to deal with the locals tonight. Vero is sitting at the bar, deep in conversation with Susie. He hesitates, then goes over to them.
‘Hey,’ he says. They both look up, neither smiling. ‘Listen, I want you to know that Blair didn’t kill anyone. They’ve got the wrong guy.’
Susie doesn’t say anything, she looks upset, but Vero reaches her hand out to him. ‘Susie and I were just saying that it’s hard to believe Blair would do something like that. He’s so quiet and polite. And Mark, well, I know he always thought a lot of Blair. But you know they had a big argument the night of my birthday and someone saw him on the street near Todd’s house that morning …’
‘He didn’t do it. I’ve known him since we were kids, and he would never, could never, do something like this. It wasn’t Blair, I promise you that.’
There’s a long pause. ‘Does that mean the person who did this is still out there?’ says Vero, a tremor in her voice.
He looks at their anxious faces. He’s been so determined to clear Blair’s name that the fact that a killer remains on the loose in this tiny, cut-off town, and what that means for everyone who lives here, hasn’t been top of his mind.
‘I think so,’ he says. ‘But don’t worry. The police are still investigating and I’m not going anywhere either. I’m staying, I’m looking into it and I’m going to find who did this.’
‘I’m glad. I feel safer with you around. Honestly, I feel like I can’t cope at the moment,’ says Vero, her voice cracking. ‘It’s not just Mark’s murder but there’s all the practical stuff. I want to plan his funeral but the police still have his body. I have to figure out what to do with the shop and the mine and I don’t know where to start. I need to get home but I’m stuck here. But then I don’t want to be alone on the coast either. What am I going to do without him? I’m so alone …’
‘You’re not alone,’ says Susie, but Vero doesn’t acknowledge her; she’s looking at Walker, eyes glistening, fighting back tears.
‘What about your family?’ he asks.
‘My mum’s in WA, we’re not close. There’s no one.’ She lets out a quiet sob and he reaches over, touches her hand.
‘We’ll help you,’ he says. ‘You’ve got Susie and the rest of us – we’ll help you, I promise.’
She sniffs. ‘Thanks, darls,’ she says. ‘I’m about to have my tea – do you want to eat with me? I hate eating alone …’
He shakes his head. ‘I can’t. I’ve left Grace at the cabin. She’s really upset about Blair, and she’s scared, too, by what happened at the roadhouse earlier.’
‘Everyone’s scared,’ says Vero. ‘What about me? It was my husband who was murdered.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’m glad you’ve got Susie looking after you.’
‘Yeah, I guess,’ she says.
He orders the meals from Susie and a beer to drink while he waits. Vero is looking down at her drink, not talking. He reckons she’s upset with him for saying no to dinner.
‘What was going on at the roadhouse this afternoon?’ he asks her.
She shrugs. ‘Like I said, everyone’s scared. They’ve decided to organise a citizen patrol. Make sure nothing else terrible happens. Paul and Mrs Pidgeon reckon we can’t wait on you cops to sort things out. They’re worried someone else could get killed. Reckon it’s better we patrol the town ourselves and stay safe.’
‘What kind of patrol?’
‘They’re taking it in turns, some of the blokes, every three hours, groups of two, driving around. From sunset to sunrise. Anyone on the street that shouldn’t be there, acting suspicious, they’re gonna pull them in, take ’em to the cop shop.’
Walker hadn’t realised the extent of the fear in town. Either that, or it’s a chance to even up some scores in the name of renegade justice.
‘Who’s in this patrol, then?’ he asks.
‘Paul and Mal, Scott, couple of others from the fire crew …’
‘Don’t reckon it’s a good idea,’ says Walker. ‘Sounds a bit vigilante to me, could cause all kinds of trouble.’
‘Well, I feel better knowing they’re out there,’ says Vero, her voice hard. ‘I don’t want to be the next person fetching up dead.’ She picks up her drink, turns away, and he sighs inwardly. Her husband has been violently killed, she’s grieving and upset, and he’s going into police mode. Still, this idea of a patrol is a terrible idea, and he wonders if Stones and White know about it.
Vero is talking with Susie and he’s thinking about Blair locked up in Longreach when Rudy, the guy with the tinny, arrives. On impulse Walker decides he’ll go to Mark’s camp tomorrow. He has to do something to try to find out who might have had a grudge against Mark, Karen and Todd, who might have been capable of murdering them. Mark’s camp is as good a place as any to start and Rudy is the bloke to take him there. He walks over, says ‘G’day.’ Rudy nods at him.
‘When you go back over the other side, I need a lift and a ride to Mark’s camp,’ he says.
Rudy shakes his head. ‘Tinny’s pretty full, what with me and Warren and our stuff. No space for another passenger.’
‘I don’t want to commandeer it,’ says Walker, ‘but I will if I have to.’
Rudy looks at him. Walker can sense he’s debating with himself, and after a moment he says, ‘OK. Got no room for any extra gear though.’
‘It’ll just be me,’ says Walker.
‘We leave at seven a.m. tomorrow. If you’re not there, I’m not waiting.’
Susie calls out his name, holding out two big Styrofoam boxes with their food. As he takes them from her, he says to Vero, ‘Maybe we can have that dinner tomorrow night?’
‘Yeah, OK,’ she says, sounding at least part-way mollified.
When he gets back to the cabin, unpacking the chicken parmis they’d ordered, putting them on plates, he tells Grace, ‘I saw Vero at the pub. I told her we might have dinner together tomorrow if you feel up to it.’
‘Yeah, OK. Do you think we’ll still be here tomorrow night, then?’
‘If the water goes down and we can leave, then we’ll go, of course.’ He wants to get Grace out of here, wants to see Blair. But he knows he’ll come back alone afterwards if he has to, to clear Blair’s name, to get justice for the three victims.
‘What about Blair?’ says Grace.
‘Aiko is on it. She’ll get him released. If the water’s still too high and we can’t leave, I’ll go out to Mark’s camp tomorrow, first thing. I’ve got a lift across in the tinny. The best way to clear Blair’s name is to find out who really did this.’
Grace doesn’t seem fully reassured. ‘We need to get out of here,’ she says. She’s standing by the sink, holding two glasses of water in her hands, her face anxious. ‘I know Blair didn’t do it, so whoever did kill those people is still out there. They might kill someone else. We have to leave, and we have to bring Blair with us.’
He walks over, takes the glasses and puts them on the counter, gives her a big hug. ‘I promise we’re safe. I’m here, I’m police, no one will hurt us, there’s no reason to hurt us. I want to leave too and I’m sure Blair will be with us. Aiko will get him out and as soon as the road’s clear, we’ll all go.’
After they’ve eaten, Grace decides to do some online research into her grad school options. ‘Maybe I could do the kind of thing Blair does, but for the ocean,’ she’d said over dinner. ‘I love sailing and I want to learn to dive – maybe I could do something like marine biology …’
Their mum would be proud of how seriously she’s taking this next step, thinks Walker. He’s pretty sure he didn’t plan his options with anywhere like this kind of commitment, just went off and did the first course the careers adviser recommended. It had worked out alright for him, but he reckons Grace has the right idea in taking her time to find what really suits her.
He leaves her to it and drives to the police station; he wants to make sure White knows about this local patrol. The night is dark and even on the main road there are only a few street lights, spread far apart, casting puddles of light that make the rest of the street feel even more shadowy. This crazy patrol won’t be busy. There’s not a soul about; even the car park outside the pub is empty, the main street desolate and silent. The light by the police station is out too, and the station is in darkness. He walks up the path, using his phone as a torch. Sure enough, there’s an out-of-hours contact number pinned to the door. He goes back, sits in the ute, dials, waits a couple of rings before White answers.
‘G’day, this is DS Lucas Walker.’
‘Ah, yeah, evening, DS. How can I help you?’ Walker thinks he detects a hint of nerves in the constable’s voice. ‘If it’s about Mr Mitchell, that’s out of my hands, you need to call DSS Stones.’
‘Yeah, nah, it’s not about Blair. I wanted to check, did you know some of the local guys have organised overnight patrols of the town?’
‘What kind of patrols?’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not sure. They say they want to keep the town safe and apparently they’re planning to bring anyone they see acting suspiciously in to you. But they’re all shit scared by what’s been going on and I reckon there’s a chance it could end up in a big mess if one of them decides to try and bring someone in who doesn’t want to come.’ He’s thinking of Warren Harris, Stewie Charles. Both likely to qualify as suspicious to the patrol. Neither likely to go quietly.
White is silent for a minute. ‘I dunno,’ he says. ‘Might be good to have some more eyes on the ground, in case Blair Mitchell wasn’t acting alone.’
‘It wasn’t Blair,’ says Walker firmly, ‘but I still don’t think we want local blokes running vigilante patrols.’
There’s a silence while White digests this. In the end he says, ‘Look, thanks for letting me know. I’ll keep an eye out, make sure it doesn’t get out of hand.’
Walker feels less than reassured. White isn’t totally green: he’s in his late twenties, which means he’s probably been on the force for five years or so. Walker decides he wants to get a measure of the man, a sense that he can handle the ugly mood in this town.
‘This your first outback posting, is it?’ he asks.
‘Nah. I’m based in Longreach. Since I joined the force last year I’ve done a few of these small towns, covering holidays and whatever.’
‘You joined quite late, then …’
‘Yeah, I was working in a call centre, hated it. They can fire you at the drop of a hat. I wanted something with a bit more job security, a good pension. You know how it is.’
It’s not the reason Walker joined up, but he knows plenty of blokes who were drawn to the force for similar reasons. Still, he doesn’t find it entirely convincing.
They end the call and Walker is sitting there, the street deathly still and blanketed in heavy darkness, wondering if he should escalate this to Stones. But he’s not in the bloke’s good books, so maybe it’s best to let White do that. His thoughts are interrupted by a vehicle pulling up behind him and a bright spotlight shining through the rear window. The ute is lit up like daytime. Maybe White has decided to come out after all. He shades his eyes, looks over his shoulder, can’t see anything, the light blinding him. He’s about to get out when two silhouettes appear, one on the passenger side and one by his window, the latter carrying a gun, the long barrel of a rifle clearly visible, pointing at his face.
‘What the fuck …’ His heart is beating fast in his chest, his mind racing. He’s not armed – he’s a sitting duck.