3

The Darling River is fed from smaller rivers in south-west Queensland, which in turn are fed by rainfall in the far north gulf country. These smaller rivers, like the Culgoa and the Barwon, cross the border into New South Wales around Brewarrina and converge into the Darling River. The river snakes its way past Bourke, a big transport town with wharves along the river and pubs full of paddle-steamer crews, bullockies, drovers and the usuals, and down south-west for two hundred miles through the Western Division to Wilcannia, and from there it goes to Menindee and joins the Murray. It’s a wide river, busy with paddle-steamers taking wool to Adelaide for the sales, copper ingots from Cobar, supplies, passengers and more. There are two main towns on the river between Bourke and Wilcannia: Larne on the eastern bank, and around thirty-six miles south of Larne you have Calpa, on the western bank.

The Paroo River, also coming from headwaters in Queensland, runs parallel to the Darling only further west, although it’s sometimes without water. It’s the land between the two rivers that gives the best grazing, and some of the biggest wool outfits are situated there. The stock routes follow the river and that’s how my town, Calpa, got started, as a summer stock crossing for drovers coming up from the south and heading west across to the Paroo. The paddle-steamers stopped there, too, if they had a reason.

Away from the river, stark plains stretched to the horizon on all sides, plains on which a man could die and never be found. As a trooper in a remote area, I had to be as vigilant about my own survival as well as that of others. Cobar was the nearest town to the east, about a five-hour ride, and to the west – well, there was dust, heat and the odd bore with a clanking windmill pumping up bugger-all.

The Calpa pub, the beating heart of the district, catered to the drovers and the permanent staff on the local sheep stations, the itinerant workers who flooded the place during the shearing, and the swaggies, hawkers, vagrants and assorted odd bods who lived on the riverbanks. There was a store which sold most things needed out here, a post office with a telegraph machine, my police station, a doctor’s surgery and that was it. Quiet as the grave, usually, except for a few smack-ups now and then.

As I rode back into town, I noticed people milling about outside the police station. Everyone knew of the murders. Word travelled fast out here, and there were few dams to hold it back. People were talking, crying, stunned or just staring, looking for certainty, looking for ways to make themselves safe from this unseen threat. I rode silently through the clamour, sorted my horse out and then went inside.

A large, framed lithograph of Queen Victoria hung on the wall of the police station. Spotted with fly shit and now two monarchs out of date. I needed to do something about that.

I had hoped that an order would have come through setting out where and when. It would have to come via the telegraph office because I couldn’t wait days for the mail coach delivery, which was how we usually communicated with Bourke. But there was nothing.

I pinned a bulletin to the police station noticeboard outside saying investigations were underway. They weren’t. That the trackers were onto leads. I didn’t know. That the situation was under control. It wasn’t. But giving an impression of knowing what the hell you were doing was nine-tenths of leadership. The other tenth was luck.

~

I dropped into the chair at my desk, lit a fag with a shaky hand, found a piece of paper, chewed on a pencil and looked out at the muddy street. A sulphur-crested cockatoo gnawed at the telegraph pole outside, as if he’d seen me and thought, yeah, good idea.

The front door opened. It was Thomas Fletcher from Gowrie Station. Tom was a couple of years younger than me, a big fellow, built like a front-row forward. I got up from my desk and walked around the bench towards him.

‘Is it true? Is Nessie dead?’ he yelled.

Kev, the postmaster, had just entered the station. He took one look at Tom and slapped a telegram on the counter. I quickly signed for it and he scuttled out.

‘Tom, maybe—’

‘Is she?’ he shouted.

‘Yes, she is. She was killed with Grace and James out on the road to—’

‘I have to see her.’

‘The bodies are in Cobar, and I doubt you’ll be able to—’

Before I could finish stammering, Tom raised his fist and slammed it into my face. I was hurled onto my back, slid along the floor and thudded into the wall. He loomed over me, panting, almost out of his mind. I judged it was best to stay put on the floor.

‘You’re under arrest, mister.’

Tom looked over his shoulder. Between his legs I saw Lonergan, standing in the open doorway, aiming a rifle in our direction, eyes wide with fear.

‘It’s all right,’ I mumbled, hand to my throbbing face.

‘Punching a mounted trooper? Are you out of your bloody mind?’ Lonergan cried.

‘To hell with both of you,’ Tom shouted and marched out, shoving Lonergan’s rifle to one side. I climbed to my feet and staggered over to the chair.

‘You just going to let him walk out?’

‘Settle down, he’s just found out his girl’s been murdered.’

Lonergan lowered his rifle and looked out the open door and down the street after Tom.

‘He’s not fit to be roaming Cobar looking for her body,’ I said. ‘Do you know Gowrie Station? Head north on the western river road and you’ll find the turnoff about five miles out of town with a sign that says Gowrie Station. Follow that road and you’ll come to the homestead. Hurry there and tell his father, Will Fletcher. He might be able to send men to head him off or something.’

Lonergan nodded and went back outside to his horse. Cobar was a five-hour ride to the east from here, and Tom might just have run out of fury by the time he got there. He needed help, no matter what state he’d get to. And there was no way on God’s earth Tom should see Nessie’s body.

Tom Fletcher could land a serious punch, and my head throbbed. I wetted a cloth and put it against my eye to bring down the swelling. No ice out here – not in the Coolgardie safes that served the police station, anyway. With my good eye, I read the telegram Kev brought over. ‘Detectives from Sydney coming STOP keep populace calm STOP no further action until instructed STOP.’

Kev was in and out of the station all afternoon. He was an older bloke, balding, thin and weathered, with a face like a gumnut. Had a Chinese wife, and I reckon that’s why he was out here – easier all round. They grew red geraniums in a line of old kerosene tins outside the post office. Civic gardens, Kev called them.

‘They caught them yet?’ he said, coming in with another telegram.

‘Yep, they’re in Bourke now being sentenced,’ I said, ripping open the envelope. He looked at me expectantly. It was an order to set trackers on the scene.

‘They sending reinforcements?’

‘Nope, we’re not under attack. It’s just a duplicate of a previous order. The populace can rest easy.’

‘Can you tell me who they were at least?’

‘James, Nessie and Grace Kirkbride, but I don’t know any more than that. It’s not official, so keep it to yourself.’

Kev blinked several times. ‘They sure?’

‘I found them.’

‘Oh, Jesus, Jesus Christ,’ he whispered, tears suddenly welling up in his rheumy eyes. ‘But they were just babies. You found them?’

I nodded.

‘Oh, Gus, mate,’ he murmured.

I knew Kev was no stranger to hardship. I looked down at the paper in my hand, trying to keep a grip on myself.

‘People keep tramping into the post office asking for news,’ he said eventually, wiping tears from his cheeks. ‘If you could issue regular official bulletins and pin them up outside, I’d be obliged. There’s mud all around the place and I’m the one who cleans up.’

‘I’ll do that right away, Kev. But don’t breathe a word as to who it is – not yet.’

~

At dusk I walked a few doors up to Joe’s. Joe Pryor had worked in Calpa about a year longer than me, and as single men who liked a drink or three, we struck up a friendship. Joe, in his late thirties and unmarried, wore his dark hair longish, like a Victorian poet, and combined this with a luxurious military moustache and a penchant for black suits, even at the height of summer. From a legal family, he’d been educated at Melbourne Grammar and trained as a doctor at the University of Melbourne. What was this son of the establishment doing out here in the Never-Never? I think he pondered this question many times, often while deep in his cups. But we all had our reasons. No good asking, because then you’d have to reveal your own.

I found him in his backyard, staring at a row of brown-spotted cabbage, shirt sleeves up, leaning on a shovel. The chooks in their run stopped their muttering. His old dog hauled himself up out of the last of the sunlight and waddled over to say hello.

‘All damaged by rabbits last night,’ he said, nodding at the cabbage. ‘I’d promised them to Mrs Schreiber for pickling.’

I held up a bottle of whisky. Joe dropped the shovel and we went inside to the kitchen. Everything was in order, which gave me a sense of comfort. A jam jar full of crepe myrtle sat on the whitewashed table, while a colander of potatoes, still crusted with black dirt, rested on a draining board. A mutton stew simmering on the stove filled the air with the scent of countless humble Australian kitchens, places where murder was only a story in a newspaper, soon to disappear under potato peelings.

We drank and he stared at his glass. I refilled it. We smoked, kept drinking.

‘Walk into a door, eh?’

‘Tom Fletcher.’

‘Why?’

‘Needed to punch something,’ I said with a shrug.

‘Poor bastard.’

There was a small iron crank handle on the table alongside a thick screw, an iron disc with holes in it and other bits and pieces.

‘What’s this?’

‘Broken meat grinder. Mrs Schreiber wants me to fix it.’

I stubbed out my cigarette and tried fitting the pieces together. ‘The circular blade goes in here.’

‘Yeah, but there’s nothing to hold it.’

A fly buzzed around the window above the sink. I poured some more whisky, considered the grinder pieces. Footsteps. We looked up. Lonergan slammed the screen door open, panting. ‘Dr Pryor, you’re needed at the Kirkbrides’, urgently. Miss Flora.’

‘Is she all right? What happened?’ Joe asked, leaping up.

‘Tried to drown herself in the river.’

‘Alive?’

‘Only just.’

Joe raced off to get his bag. I gulped my whisky, felt the burn of it, and took a few more swallows to kill the bees swarming through my veins. Ran back to the station to saddle Dancer.

~

There was smoke haze above the men’s quarters at Inveraray Station. The dusk air was bitterly cold already, settling over the land like dread. Birds screeched and bickered as they settled into their perches for the night, an undertone to their racket, like they’d all gone mad and were fighting over some terrifying vision only they could see.

Joe shrank into his coat, stunned by the sudden rift in the world. The windows of the homestead glowed in the dusky gloom, lamps burning to guide the spirits of Nessie, James and Grace home. Except they never would. I was relieved to dismount, plant my feet on the ground and toss the reins to the Kirkbride stable boy.

Joe was taken straight to Flora. I wanted to go with him but the maid took me to Robert Kirkbride’s study. A large clock above the fireplace ticked, counting off the minutes that his children no longer lived. The fire crackled and hissed. A painted portrait hung above the mantel, a Kirkbride patriarch no doubt, all muttonchop whiskers and stone eyes. From somewhere in the house came the sound of a woman wailing, high and eerie, repeated with her every breath.

Robert Kirkbride was a tall, lean man with sparse, greying hair. His face had a hard cast to it, like a Greek mask, the eyes black and hollow. He wasn’t a man to be trifled with and had more influence in the Western Division than was proper, to my way of thinking. But tonight, slumped in his chair, wearing rumpled pyjamas, he looked beaten. I’ve seen parents react to the death of their child – even had to deliver the awful news once or twice. They land on the reality of their child’s death like a plum falling on granite. The mess could never be stuffed back inside the skin and made to look whole.

Reverend Hickson sat beside him, a hand on Kirkbride’s shoulder, a copy of the Bible in his ample lap, flesh bulging above his dog collar. Hickson was the Church of England minister from Cobar. A sanctimonious prick who gloried in tragedy, he sniffed me out when I first arrived in the district – six-foot-four worth of trouble with a thirst for strong drink and a chip on my shoulder so big I could barely stand upright. After several encounters, Hickson gave me a wide berth.

‘Mr Kirkbride,’ I said. ‘I am sorry to intrude on your grief, but—’

‘How could Flora do this to us?’ he murmured. ‘How could she, after …’

‘I’m going to have to speak to McIntosh and anyone else who was witness.’

‘I don’t want this to get out. People will talk about her.’

It seemed the least of his worries. Flora had every reason to do what she did, and I’d challenge anyone who called her feeble-minded, or a disgrace, or guilty of an insult to God. If Hickson was peddling that line, I’d have words with him.

I left them, and as I was halfway down the corridor the Reverend called me back, a wary look in his eye.

‘Constable, Mr Kirkbride wished me to ask you not to formally report this incident. It is a crime, I know, and God will view it as such, but let’s leave it to Him to deal with.’

‘I hope you aren’t saying that to Miss Flora?’

‘I minister to my congregation as I see fit, and you police as you see fit.’

‘I police as the law instructs me to, Reverend.’ Bloody halfwit.

‘Mr Kirkbride is concerned that if this gets out, it will ruin her chances of making a good marriage.’

I must have failed in keeping up the dispassionate look all troopers strive for, because the Reverend raised his eyebrows.

‘He has done you a great many favours,’ he reminded me.

‘Tell him I won’t report it.’

But I still needed to know what happened.