6

A piece of chalk hit me in the face. The Latin master barked, ‘You, Hawkins – Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – who said it and why?’

I pawed my face, opened my eyes. The chalk was a chunk of rust from the tin ceiling of the hotel room. As I dressed, wincing as the scars pulled at my flesh, the well-worn phrase echoed, but nobody ever said, Dulce et decorum est pro patria debilitari. No, to be maimed for one’s country was another matter entirely, just endless pain, knifing me if I turned this way or that, reached or raised my arm, breathed or held my breath, slept or lay awake. It wears a man down, to be in constant pain.

After a solid breakfast I went to the railway station, where I found Corcoran standing on the platform trying to read a copy of the Western Herald in the wind – a westerly, worse luck, which was bringing great rolling clouds of dust that settled on horses, walls, uniforms, hair, tongue, throat, eyes and mind. Corcoran shut the paper, almost mangling it in his frustration.

‘Anything in the papers today, sir?’

‘Headlines. Three dead after the Larne dance.’

‘Names?’

‘They wouldn’t dare.’

‘This isn’t going to be like Breelong, sir. They knew who the killers were, had witnesses, it was just a matter of time before they got him.’

‘It may come as a surprise to you, Hawkins, but I’m well aware of the difficulties.’

‘Sir.’

Porters stood about waiting with their trolleys, peering down the tracks leading east. Soon the train pulled into the station with a great squealing of wheels, steam and coal smoke billowing everywhere. The two detectives were not hard to pick, both wearing city suits, their pallor standing out among the weathered locals like quartz in the dirt. They looked through the plumes of smoke and dust with disbelief.

Detective Inspector John Denning, a thin, dour Geordie in his fifties, eyes as hard as goat’s knees. And Detective First Class Arthur Baines, a beat cop in a cheap suit, younger, stocky, fag-stained fingers, looking over the station with a mix of surprise and contempt.

‘No,’ Denning said, when Corcoran asked him if he’d been out here before.

‘Never been west of Petersham,’ Baines said with a nervous laugh. ‘You got blacks out here?’

Corcoran and I exchanged a quick glance. Had they not been briefed, or did Bourke just get two of Sydney’s finest?

‘We’ve got a two-seater buggy, and quiet, steady horses,’ Corcoran said. ‘Senior Constable Hawkins here will escort you where you need to go. He knows the district, knows the people. We have all the equipment you need packed and ready to go, and a stenographer and typist who will be based in the Royal Hotel in Calpa.

‘Distances are the defining factor in this district, as you may well understand,’ he continued. ‘We do not use telephones as they are not secure, but we rely heavily on the mail coaches and the telegram service and the integrity and quality of our troopers at each station. We have six junior troopers, who will be at your command to take statements and any other duties as you see fit. If you need more manpower, we’ll find it for you.’

Denning listened while looking me up and down. I looked him up and down, hackles rising. Men staring at my face had copped my fist in theirs over the years, and I wasn’t beyond hitting a senior officer, given enough provocation.

~

The six troopers waited patiently out the back. They were all young blokes, no more than eighteen or nineteen, and green as week-old mutton, but they jumped to attention and seemed keen to get going.

A cart full of supplies, including a typewriter, sat waiting. A bloke with a large moustache, a bowler hat and tight suit introduced himself as Mr Terrence Fraser, the typist and stenographer. He’d been seconded from the local magistrate’s court and looked supremely disinterested in the whole affair. Then there were two carts, each with a towering load of hay and feed for the horses, driven by two local men, and four spare horses tied along behind the second cart.

The riverfront wharves were busy with four paddle-steamers loading or unloading, the water levels high enough for the traffic. The punt man loaded the forage wagons one at a time and took them across. Baines, fag in hand, watched the bustle on the nearby banks.

‘Like bloody Circular Quay,’ he said. ‘You know Sydney?’

‘Did my training at Moore Park.’

‘Know your way around a horse, then.’

I gave him a sideways look. ‘I’m a mounted trooper, mate – be a bloody shame if I didn’t.’

‘Yeah, right,’ he said, distracted.

We could scarce hear each other over the grind of the engine pulling the punt cable, men shouting instructions as they slid the bales of wool down the levee banks of the river to be loaded onto barges, dogs barking, horses neighing. But Baines was a talker.

‘You got the telephone at your station?’

‘No, not secure. We use telegrams and the mail coach.’ Was he not listening?

‘So nobody’s got a telephone in Calpa?’

‘The big stations have them, but only to communicate with staff in distant parts of their property. Can’t make calls to Sydney, if that’s what you’re hoping.’

He nodded, scratched himself, looked uncertain. We were a long way from Phillip Street.

Once the fodder carts were across on the punt, the cart with Mr Fraser went over, then the six troopers and their horses, then me and the spare horses, and finally the buggy with the detectives. I sorted them all on the other side with the troopers bringing up the rear, each leading a spare horse. It had taken an hour and a half to get everyone across and we had a six-hour ride to Calpa, probably seven, following the river road south as it clung to the curves and bends.

At the halfway mark we stopped. Horses were unharnessed, fed, watered and re-harnessed. While this was going on, Denning consulted his notes. Baines, squinting in the harsh light, looked around at the vast plains around us and back at the comforting milky brown water of the Darling. Mr Fraser smoked and read his newspaper. The fodder men leant against their carts and had a yarn about the business.

‘We going to stop in Larne for a drink?’ Baines said, looking at a map.

‘Not if you want to get to Calpa at midnight. Larne is on the east bank, so we’d have to cross over on the punt again, then cross back.’

‘Because Calpa is on the west bank, right?’

I nodded.

Baines shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the poor planning that resulted in the two towns being on opposite sides of the river. ‘It is going to be tough covering these distances,’ he said.

‘Not so bad when we get to Calpa. Crime scene is twelve miles north of the town, the Inveraray homestead about nine, and most residents are within a twenty-mile radius. Larne is thirty-six miles away, a three-hour ride.’

‘Three hours?’ he murmured. ‘Bloody hell.’

We set off again, riding south with a harsh westerly coming at us. The landscape didn’t change and it was slow going. Nothing happened quickly out here: the distances, the climate, the way it slowed a man down on the inside to the point where days folded in on themselves. Yesterday became today and then tomorrow and yesterday again. Country like this turned a man’s mind to such notions.

~

On arrival, I showed the detectives to the Calpa Royal Hotel. Wally Mansell, the publican, was happy to have three of his four rooms taken over. The government always paid its bills, so it was a win for him. I took the horses down to the police station paddock and turned them loose to get acquainted, then instructed the troopers on where to pitch their tents, where to eat and wash, and warning them off any alcohol.

The prospect of wrangling this bunch of boys, lured from labouring by the promise of money and manhunts, irritated me. All these people rudely crashing in on my solitude, my habits and routines. I didn’t want or need any of them. Idiots, the lot of them.

At the station I took a bottle of beer from the meat safe out back, flipped the lid and drank. Inside, I found Lonergan on hands and knees, arse in the air.

‘What are you doing, Trooper?’

‘A mouse, sir. I lived the through the ’04 mouse plague and it’s not anything you want to experience. Sir.’

‘This is my station and my fucking mouse, and I’ll deal with it.’

‘I can patch this hole, sir, quick—’

I stared.

‘Yes, sir.’

On my way out I caught a glimpse of him rolling his eyes and shaking his head, took a step back and got right in his hairy paddy face. ‘You better stay out of my sight while you’re here, Trooper.’

‘Sir.’

~

I left the detectives for a couple of hours to orient themselves, then strolled over to invite them for a drink, as was the welcoming custom in these parts. Baines was resting but Denning came out. The Royal Hotel, the only pub in town, was a place for stockmen and shearers to drink their wages and blow off steam. As the only cop, it was out of respect for them that I mostly stayed away unless there was trouble. A police trooper in a full pub is about as welcome as a dog at a game of skittles.

Wally, the publican, had a huge belly – all that beer had to go somewhere – and a head of thick white hair. He told me that one day, just after the 1890 floods, he woke up and his hair had turned white overnight. Reckoned he looked distinguished now, that he might even be taken for being part of the squattocracy, a notion that always set the pub rocking with laughter. Sir Wally of Pisspot Hall. He liked Rowland’s Macassar Oil and slathered it on his white hair like dripping on a joint of lamb. I’d met a lot of publicans along the way and old Wal was one of the best.

Denning gazed around Wally’s pub as if the place were a personal insult to him. The long wooden bar scarred with fag burns, the small range of cheap rum and whisky bottles on the shelf, the rickety stools, the pockmarked dartboard, the old photographs of the Calpa XI in their whites, the smell of beer and carbolic, Wally’s old kelpie cross who growled at everyone, all of it humble and workaday. We took an unsteady table in the corner and Wally brought over a couple of beers.

‘You served in the second Boer War, so I’m told,’ Denning said, as he wiped the froth from his upper lip. ‘I served in the first. Rifleman in the Gordon Highlanders.’

‘The Gay Gordons. Thought you were a Geordie.’

‘After the war. Grew up in Aberdeen,’ he said.

‘No trace of the Scot left in your accent.’

‘And you?’

‘New South Wales Mounted Rifles.’

‘Under British command?’

‘Attached to British units but commanded by our own officers.’

Denning looked over the rim of his glass and gave a derisive snort. ‘Like the ones they executed for shooting prisoners. Couple of badly trained lieutenants, weren’t they?’

‘Not as badly trained as the soldiers they executed for cowardice after the Battle of Majuba Hill. I recollect they were Gordon Highlanders – maybe you knew them?’

Denning put his glass down slowly, placing it with precision on the coaster.

‘Britain’s biggest defeat, soldiers turned and ran and the rest were picked off by Dutch farm boys, so I heard,’ I said. ‘Damn fine shots, too. Offered to give your fellows instruction in musketry, apparently. General Colley was a procrastinator, or so we were instructed in officer training. Act decisively, dislocate and disrupt, not sit on your hands and hope. Now, your average Boer—’

I was just warming up when Denning excused himself.

~

Later, as I fell into bed, I noticed, on top of the small bedside cabinet, a silver coin. The thruppence from the crime scene. A small hole had been drilled right where old Vicky’s crown perched. Dated 1893, with the usual Latin incantation inscribed around the edge. But the back of the coin had been smoothed and replaced with an engraving of two initials, A and E entwined. Debasing the Queen’s coin was an offence, but these love tokens were common.

Mrs Schreiber must have found it in my breeches. By rights, this was evidence, given where it was found. But I decided to hang onto it. Denning could go to hell.

~

Next morning, up early as usual, I quickly dressed and went through to the station to hunt down the errors Lonergan had made over the last two days. Couldn’t find them, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. I compiled a list of chores I expected him to do while I was out with the detectives, as well as a map of my beat, which I expected him to ride, not in a daze but on the lookout for disorder or the unusual. I had no faith in him and ignored him when he appeared.

The detectives were waiting outside the hotel, Denning consulting his notes. Baines smoked and gazed around, still wearing a look of city incredulity at finding himself out here.

‘Not much of a town, is it?’ Denning said.

‘It services the local population well enough, sir.’

‘Why do they have a senior constable stationed here? Waste of a salary. You should be in a bigger town.’

‘I’m waiting to be reassigned, sir.’

‘We’d be better off with the other trooper.’

‘With respect, sir, I have been stationed here for several years. I know the people and they may feel more comfortable having a familiar face nearby when you question them.’

‘We’re not here to make them feel comfortable – the opposite, in fact. You will escort and advise on local conditions. You will not question any witnesses, interrupt or otherwise try to influence the investigation.’

‘Sir, I found the bodies and have some ideas on—’

‘I am not interested in your ideas. You will escort and protect.’

I mounted up and ordered the troopers to do likewise. If Denning wanted to spit his wee dummy, then so be it. The bush has its fair share of grumpy old bastards – more than its fair share, probably. Hardship doesn’t grow pretty flowers. Inspector John Denning should feel right at home.

I led the way back to the scene of the murders along the muddy, rutted road. The troopers on watch, on rotation from Bourke, sagged with relief to see us, until I shot them a hard look that caused them to straighten up again. Police talk shop whenever they’re together and stories of lazy, undisciplined mounted troopers could spread back to Sydney like a bad cold. Not that I cared much unless I was officer in charge. Then I did.

The Kirkbrides’ cart was gone. Baines walked beside the wheel ruts and back again, then consulted his notes. The westerly from yesterday had blown itself out. Above us, a wedge-tailed eagle rode the updrafts. He was lucky to be alive, given it was coming into lambing season. Eagles loved newborn lambs as much as farmers hated eagles.

‘Oi, Hawkins,’ Baines said. ‘What do you reckon happened?’

‘They were coming from the north-east, travelling to their homestead, and someone’s waylaid them and forced them up here. The fence has been pushed down and they’ve driven the cart over it.’

Baines pushed his hat back, swiped at the flies. ‘Any other horse tracks found around here?’

‘We won’t know until the trackers return.’

‘Killers were waiting for them,’ Baines said, looking around with a grim face. ‘Knew they were headed down this road and waited for them. Two things – it was personal or it was opportunism gone wrong.’

‘Gone wrong?’

‘Yeah, man wants what they have, they won’t give it to him. His bloods up, it’s not going as he planned it. He lashes out and then it’s on, he runs amok. But he didn’t start out that way. The sort of blokes that rob opportunistically are rarely masters of self-control.’

Denning joined us. ‘Miss Nessie’s face, that’s personal. They had a gun, and we can see that they weren’t afraid to fire it, so why beat the other two to death?’

Baines stared at the blood on the drying mud, smoking, frowning. A breeze stirred the coolabahs. A couple of ravens watched us, big, coal-black birds with a cry like an ancient lament.

‘Was Nessie a flirt? Liked to lead men on, that sort of thing?’ Denning asked.

‘Not at all.’

‘The younger one?’

‘She’s – she was – a child.’

‘What about James Kirkbride?’

‘He did not lead men on.’

Denning gave me a sour look. Jimmy Kirkbride cut a swathe through the female population of the district with a playful smile and one thing on his mind. But Detective Denning could dig that nugget up himself.

‘What do you know about Robert Kirkbride?’ he asked.

‘One of the biggest landholders in the Western Division, with runs both north and south of here, and further east too. But Inveraray is the jewel in the crown, the one his grandfather founded.’

‘Sheep, not cattle, right?’ Baines asked.

‘Sheep, yes. They run about a hundred thousand, and they’re expanding now the worst of the drought is over. I know Jimmy wants – or wanted – to run another hundred thousand. He reckoned the land could take it if they did it right.’

‘Jimmy’s death’s going to hit the business hard then, not just the family?’

I nodded. ‘Their reputation is as a solid venture. These big stations run on British investment. Couldn’t be done without it. But give ’em a nasty scare and the shareholders will pull out and put their money into Malay rubber, Indian cotton, Canadian wheat, wherever there’s a profit to be made.’

‘Anyone you know with a grudge against Kirkbride?’ Denning asked.

‘He’s a rich man and getting richer with every clip. Success breeds enemies, but I personally wouldn’t know about his business dealings.’

‘Cui bono,’ Baines said. ‘That’s what you look for.’

‘Who benefits?’

‘Yeah, because there’s always someone.’