Douglas Farquhar wanted us to meet at his house. I could have objected to the location, but as it saved me a trip to Dubbo, I agreed. Andrew Martin, the vet from the zoo, will be there on the veterinary board’s behalf. Blake Sinclair will also be there. Sinclair told Hugo I could take my time, but I’ve taken enough time already. Once tonight’s meeting—a week after the funeral—is over, I can piece my career back together again.
I check my watch as I walk down the steps of my house. Six o’clock, and it’s only a thirty-minute walk. Eeyore, standing in his favourite nighttime spot between the water tank and the house, turns his head as I approach.
‘Have you finished your hay already?’ When I scratch under his chin, he lowers his head and shoves his nose against my thigh. Laughing, I push him away before brushing grey and white hair from my navy-blue jeans. ‘I’m supposed to be clean and tidy.’
I climb through the fence to access Douglas Farquhar’s land and, careful to avoid the thistles on the boundary, forge a trail through the grass, navigating ditches, rabbit holes and soggy patches. I also keep an eye out for macho young bulls. The older bulls, many worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, are kept in yards and monitored with security cameras. Decades ago, liquidambar and peppercorn trees were planted in every paddock. Even though they’re deciduous and lose their leaves in winter, they’re sufficiently large to provide shelter and shade throughout the year.
‘Oh!’
Ten yearlings, their gazes more curious than threatening, stand in the shadows of the trees. I take a circuitous route around them, resorting to walking on tiptoes when my boots sink into the ground. The hems of my jeans are wet, as are my socks, and splashes of watery mud stick to the backs of my legs. I could have driven here. Maybe I should have. But I wanted to clear my head, prepare myself.
Primrose Cartwright got it wrong. Douglas Farquhar has no case to answer. This meeting is nothing more than a procedural necessity. I’ll be given an opportunity to hear the reasoning behind the board’s decision. I’ll sign papers agreeing to withdraw my accusations and to keep quiet in the future.
A yearling, entirely black like his contemporaries, has broken away and lowers his head. He has a stocky body, a high wither at the base of his neck and a squarish head. He’s solid and powerful, a prime example of the Angus breed, but his tail reminds me of Eeyore’s: long and twitchy with dark bushy hair at the end. The tag on his ear glints palely, as do the whites of his eyes. We stare at each other for the count of three. Then, holding out my arms to appear bigger than I am, I slowly back up until, with one final stare, he returns to his friends. I glance at my watch. Six-twenty.
Farquhar’s house, a two-storey central block with a single-storey wing either side, is built of concrete, brick and stone. The outbuildings, including an indoor sales arena, barns, yards and a fully equipped veterinary facility, are a hundred metres behind the house. The treatment rooms are used mostly for stud purposes, such as sperm collection and storage.
Headlights shine through the poplars on the driveway, but I can’t make out the vehicle. It could be one of Farquhar’s fleet of Jaguars, Range Rovers and other European cars, but it’s more likely to be Andrew or Sinclair. Andrew offered to collect me on his way through, but I was afraid of the questions he might ask.
Two years ago, not long after I’d rented the house through Farquhar’s agent, Farquhar came to the door and welcomed me to the neighbourhood. Well groomed, expensively dressed and with the slender build of a committed cyclist, he appeared younger than forty-eight. He looked curiously from Eeyore to Bonny to Juniper, before pointing out that he’d paid a lot of money to erect fences on our boundary and he wouldn’t want my animals to damage them.
‘I don’t think they will,’ I said.
‘You’ll be aware this land floods every few years?’
I smiled uncertainly. ‘If it didn’t flood, I … wouldn’t have been able to afford the rent.’
‘I understand you’re a vet.’ After commenting that I barely looked old enough to have qualified, he bragged about the specialist vets he flew in from Sydney, expressing surprise that I hadn’t heard of most of them. And then he left. A year later, I received a call. Would I accept a retainer to work two days a week at his stud? One of his regular vets, who generally took care of the cows, was on paternity leave. I’d be given a six-month contract.
I was interested in improving the lives of production animals. The regular income would be useful and the job was close to home. I wondered why Farquhar had asked me, but maybe he was merely being neighbourly? Even though, from what I’d heard in the town, he spent most of his time in Sydney.
In the first few weeks, I examined the stud’s newly pregnant heifers and cows, but as they were healthy and their due dates were months away, I wasn’t sure what else to do. I spoke to Pascal Diaz, Farquhar’s stock manager. Pascal was responsible for supervising the breeding program. He often worked in the basement of the veterinary facility, a well-lit but windowless office space beneath the treatment rooms.
‘You’d better reread your job description,’ he said defensively, arms crossed. ‘Your responsibilities start and end with the heifers and cows.’
I took a step back. ‘Just asking.’
‘We all have our specialties.’ He made an obvious effort to soften his tone. ‘Mr Farquhar pays us generously to keep to them.’
As Pascal escorted me from the basement, he told me it would be perfectly acceptable to arrive later in the mornings. And naturally, I could leave early. But I shouldn’t take on tasks assigned to others.
I was running routine checks on the cows the first time I saw Siegfried, the stud’s multichampionship winning bull. He was being unloaded from the truck by Pascal and two farmhands, and his inky-black coat was glistening. I was with Geoff Sims, an assistant stud manager who’d been with Farquhar for years. He shouted out to Pascal.
‘Any ribbons?’
‘Best in Show!’
‘He’s well put together,’ I said. ‘No wonder he wins.’
‘No mucking about with Siegfried,’ Geoff said. ‘A few years ago, in his second season, we put him in a field with fifty cows.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Within a couple of months, forty-nine were in calf.’
I laughed. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘True story.’
The two farmhands stood either side of Siegfried, holding ropes clipped to the large stainless-steel ring in his nose. Catching a scent, his nostrils flared and he baulked. After a sharp prod to his rump, he leapt into one of the yards.
For the next few weeks, I did as Pascal had requested, limiting my activities to checking up on the heifers and cows. Occasionally I chatted to Jamie, Farquhar’s painfully shy eighteen-year-old nephew. Jamie had left school the previous year, and this was his first paid job. It’d been designed, according to Pascal, to ‘make him or break him’. Jamie updated files, helped the stock assistants with sperm collection and cleaned up the yards, but he wouldn’t make a move without direction.
‘It’ll get easier,’ I reassured him.
‘You reckon?’
At the end of my second month working at the stud, Pascal intercepted me on the way to my car. He said I was still spending a lot of time there, with not a lot to do. I thought he was going to suggest more work, but he told me that, from now on, I would only be called out if I was required. I’d still be paid a retainer.
‘Does Mr Farquhar know about this?’
He grunted. ‘Nothing happens without his say-so.’
Soon enough, the cows would reach the end of their pregnancies and I’d be needed regularly. Much as getting paid for being on call didn’t feel right, I reassured myself that things would balance out in the end.
The following week, I received a call from one of the farmhands, who told me he’d left a message with Pascal and a couple of their regular vets, but none of them had called back. One of the young bulls was lame and he was having trouble keeping him on his feet. Could I come and take a look?
The yearling had an abscess. I’d finished applying a poultice when Jamie came into the yards. Pale and upset, he told me he’d lost an important document and had spent most of the day on the computer trying to get it back.
I went to the basement with Jamie and found the file—which he’d mistakenly deleted—in a backup drive. Jamie was relieved and thankful but still overwrought. He logged off, downed a Coke and declared he was going home.
I was alone in the basement. And, much as I’d been reluctant to ask Pascal questions about Siegfried or anything else, I was still curious. Calves I’d be looking after would have been sired by the bull. Had the season Geoff told me about been a one-off? What were the subsequent pregnancy rates? There were shelves of textbooks, manuals and bulging dog-eared folders in the basement. The data in the folders was used for the preparation of reports released by the stud, which was sent out to livestock organisations, auctioneers, other breeders, clients who purchased semen, even abattoirs and supermarkets.
In Siegfried’s first season, he’d been put in a paddock with fifty cows. The pregnancy rate was around seventy-five per cent; average, given the number and age of the cows. Two years later, after that batch of cows had given birth, weaned their calves and come into season again, they were put back in a paddock with Siegfried. Just as Geoff had told me, Siegfried had impregnated ninety-eight per cent of them. Was Siegfried suddenly more virile or were the cows, a more likely scenario, somehow more fertile? I rechecked the data. Farquhar owned hundreds of cows, and many of them were matched up with the same bulls every two years. All this data made it into the final reports—except for the data from Siegfried’s spectacular second season.
I checked and cross-checked. I scribbled notes on a pad. Turned the page. Made additional notes. I wasn’t aware of footsteps on the stairs, but something made me turn.
Farquhar, formally dressed in a suit and tie, was standing only metres away. He fingered the screen of the phone in his hand.
‘Dr Cartwright,’ he said. ‘What brings you down here?’
I felt like I’d done something wrong. ‘Jamie called me in,’ I said defensively.
He gestured to my scribbled notes. ‘What’s keeping you here?’
I naively thought Pascal might be hiding things from Farquhar. In any case, I knew what the data suggested and I had a duty to report it.
I flicked through one of the folders. ‘This information … was collected three years ago, but data on … Siegfried … some of it … was kept out of the annual … stock reports.’
Farquhar placed a hand on the back of my chair, rolling it towards the desk. ‘Go on.’
‘Some of those cows … were three and four years old, others … were … six or … seven. Their pregnancy rates are far higher than they should’ve been. See how the cows’ fertility rates … went up, even though they … were all covered by Siegfried.’
Farquhar leaned over my shoulder, so close I smelled his breath.
‘Pascal compiled the data, didn’t he?’ I said. ‘He must have known this … was anomalous.’
‘What about nutritional developments?’ Farquhar asked. ‘Improved fertility could be attributable to that.’
When I pushed against the desk, Farquhar was forced to step back. ‘Your … stock is always in peak condition. Anyway … why only … Siegfried?’
‘Improvements in reproductive technology?’
‘He covered the cows in the paddock.’ I turned pages in the folders. ‘There … was no artificial insemination or in vitro intervention.’
‘What are you saying?’ he asked sharply. ‘How do you explain this?’
I turned the chair slowly. Farquhar’s fists were clenched, the knuckles starkly white. Jamie had gone home and other farmhands rarely came down here. I did my best to speak calmly.
‘The pregnancy rates don’t add up … Someone is hiding … something.’
‘Impossible.’
‘I’m no expert but—’
‘Correct.’ Tiny bubbles of spit formed at the corner of Farquhar’s mouth.
‘Can you move out of the … way?’
He looked from me to the stairs, then took a few steps back. I stood so quickly that the chair flew out behind me, hitting the desk.
‘You’re mistaken,’ he said.
‘I don’t think I am.’
He smiled stiffly. ‘Tell me what conclusions you have drawn.’
I must have still had a vestige of hope, a tiny belief, that he’d want to investigate, to find out what had happened.
‘The cows … were given a drug to enhance fertility. It … was never disclosed.’
Farquhar’s landscape lighting is too bright. Red pebble driveway, black stone pavers, a startling white portico. Sinclair’s four-wheel drive is already here and Andrew Martin parks next to it. He walks towards me with his hand outstretched.
‘Prim!’ he says. ‘What perfect timing.’
I dredge up a smile. ‘The veterinary board roped you into this, didn’t it?’
He pats the folder under his arm. ‘They also provided a script.’
‘We have to sign the papers. That’s all, isn’t it?’
He smiles encouragingly. ‘We’ll keep this short and sweet. As the matter is settled, there’s no point doing otherwise.’
I take off my boots and roll up the legs of my jeans as Andrew rings the bell and speaks into the monitor. The housekeeper, a tall attractive woman, looks warily at my damp pink and white socks.
‘They’re clean,’ I reassure her.
A hallway with a polished concrete floor leads to Farquhar’s study, a room at least half the size of my house. The study faces a courtyard and hedge, and beyond that, hills of lightly treed land. Farquhar, lounging in one of the chairs arranged around a circular glass table, puts down his tumbler. Sinclair stands. He was clean shaven at the funeral, but I don’t think he’s shaved in the past few days. His eyes are deepest blue.
‘Prim.’
I hold out my hand. ‘Dr … Sinclair.’
Our shake isn’t too long or short, or too lax or firm. But after we let go, I open and close my fingers. One of Farquhar’s buddies, I remind myself.
Farquhar, now also standing, holds out a hand. ‘Prim.’
We shake briefly. ‘Mr Farquhar.’
‘I was sorry to hear of your father’s death.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Was he unwell when you worked here?’ A tilt to his head. ‘You should have spoken up.’
‘It wasn’t relevant.’
A pinched smile. ‘Perhaps not.’
‘Well, well, well.’ Braving a smile, Andrew pulls out chairs and suggests we sit. Andrew is on one side of me, Farquhar sits across the table from him and Sinclair sits opposite me. Andrew’s folder is neatly tabbed, Farquhar’s thick buff file has my name on it. Sinclair has only his phone in front of him. The housekeeper appears again, pouring glasses of water before retreating.
Andrew follows his script and reads out Farquhar’s complaint—a veterinary surgeon, registered by the organisation for which the board is responsible, made serious and damaging allegations against him, which warranted a full investigation.
Farquhar had covered his tracks immediately after I left the basement. He got rid of references to the anomalous entries and swore a declaration that neither he nor anyone else had touched the folders before handing them onto the board. And, as the data was now consistent with the annual stock reports, there was no reason to doubt his word. Pascal, who travelled overseas within a few days of my discovery, gave a statement confirming what Farquhar had said. Jamie, who spoke to the board over the phone, told them he didn’t know why I’d gone to the basement, but he had had nothing to do with it. When I finally got on to Geoff, he denied having said anything about Siegfried and then he hung up on me.
‘Anything to add so far?’ Andrew asks.
‘I don’t believe so,’ Farquhar says.
I sip from my glass. ‘No.’
When Andrew asks Sinclair to detail his findings, he confirms that blood samples were taken from a number of cows that Siegfried had serviced, but nothing untoward was found. All Farquhar’s bulls, including Siegfried, were tested and cleared.
When we were at the Holden’s farm, Sinclair said he’d submitted his findings. Nothing else. If that were the case, then why—
‘Prim?’
From the way everyone is staring, I figure it’s not the first time Andrew has said my name.
‘There was no evidence of fertility stimulants or other foreign substances in the blood,’ Andrew says. ‘Do you have anything to add?’
‘I know … what I heard and … saw.’
‘You could have been mistaken,’ Sinclair says.
‘I … wasn’t.’
‘Rubbish,’ Farquhar says.
‘I made notes. You confiscated them.’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Liar!’
Andrew grimaces. ‘It’s in nobody’s interests, Prim, least of all your own, to throw barbs at Douglas. As you didn’t pursue your allegations, this matter goes no further.’
‘I could have sued for defamation,’ Farquhar says. ‘I still could.’
‘How?’ My glass clunks on the table. ‘It’s not your reputation that’s been damaged, it’s mine.’
Andrew holds up his hands. ‘This is hardly conducive to—’
‘It was regular, well-paid work,’ Farquhar interrupts. ‘I did you a favour and you threw it back in my face.’
I make three attempts at ‘what’. And then, as everyone watches on, I swallow three times. Finally, ‘W … what … was my motive?’
‘You’re an animal rights activist,’ Farquhar snaps. ‘You had an agenda.’
‘I … support animal … welfare. That agenda is different. Battery hens, flyblown sheep, emaciated cattle. I’d never … see them at your … stud.’
A fake smile. ‘Is that a compliment?’
Sinclair pockets his phone. ‘Are we done?’
Farquhar frowns. ‘Where do we sign?’
‘Prim?’
Sitting on the doorstep tugging at the laces of the boots on my lap, all I see of Sinclair are his legs. I swipe my eyes with the palms of my hands.
Sinclair mutters curses under his breath. ‘Andrew said to wait. He’ll drive you home.’
Holding my boots by their laces, I get to my feet and hobble over the gravel to Andrew’s car. Sinclair, walking behind me, steps back as I open the door.
‘Can I call you?’ he says.
I turn and face him. ‘Why … would you do that?’
He hesitates. Searches my face. ‘To talk.’
Andrew and Farquhar appear on the porch. ‘Blake!’ Farquhar shouts out. ‘Your whiskey awaits!’
‘Go talk to him,’ I say through the lump in my throat.
‘Farquhar doesn’t like to be crossed.’ Sinclair frowns. ‘Keep clear of him.’
‘Is that a threat?’
‘It’s a warning.’
‘Are you his … messenger boy? His … mouthpiece?’
‘That’s offensive.’
‘You backed him up.’
‘I did my job.’
Andrew’s footsteps are loud on the gravel. ‘Sorry to keep you out in the cold.’
Andrew drives slowly, keeping watch for kangaroos and wombats. He glances at me a couple of times before breaking the silence.
‘You and Blake were arguing, weren’t you? Why was that?’
‘I don’t trust him.’
‘Like me, he was roped into this,’ Andrew says mildly.
The headlights brighten the limbs of the grey gums. ‘He and Farquhar are friends.’
‘Possibly.’
I finally loosen my laces, push my feet into my boots. ‘I hope I didn’t embarrass you.’
He drums a beat on the steering wheel. ‘When you raised a lack of motive, I thought his response was interesting.’
‘It was unexpected. And I … meant what I said. My agenda has always been animal … welfare, which is different to animal rights. I didn’t damage property or hurt anyone. I was never arrested.’
When a kangaroo hops across the road, Andrew slows to a crawl. ‘That’s all very well, Prim, but given your profession, it can be used against you. Farquhar is an influential man, and not only in the cattle industry. If you treated cats and dogs, he could do little to harm your business. But as it is …’
‘He’s already … warned farmers off.’
‘You’ve lost clients?’
‘Like you said, he’s influential. If I don’t get enough work, if I’m forced to leave the district, it supports his argument that I don’t know what I’m doing.’
‘Let the dust settle.’
‘I’ll continue to … watch him.’ I tighten my laces. ‘And so should the veterinary board.’
Andrew puffs out a breath. ‘Whatever happened in the past, he’ll play by the rules from now on. Even so, be sure to keep your head down.’
A goanna scuttles up the trunk of a tree as Andrew pulls up in front of the gate. ‘Thanks for the lift. And for your help.’
Relying on dappled moonlight, I navigate the puddles and roots on the driveway. The goats are curled up in their pen and all three horses are lying down in the shed. Eeyore, perched like a sphinx under his lean-to, twitches his ears. I lean against a post as I address him.
‘Sinclair asked if he could call me.’ My chest is tight. My throat hurts. ‘As if I’d agree to something as stupid as that?’