The Leatherwood Crossing was fifteen minutes up the road. There were a couple of cars parked on either side of a low concrete bridge, their lights illuminating the scene. Three men stood on the near bank gesticulating and pacing anxiously. One of them was flicking a rope into the raging waters.
I looked down the creek. There was a car in there pushed up against a boulder, a woman clinging to the roof. She was only a few metres away, but what metres they were: full of threats and danger, of imminent death. Put a foot wrong and you’d never be seen again. The southern end of the bridge had collapsed and the floodwaters were pouring over it. A cow came rolling by, its legs in the air, briefly, then a terrified head.
‘We’ve called the SES,’ said one of the men as we joined them.
I grunted. Fat lot of good that would do. The storm was like a twenty-four-hour tsunami. There were crises breaking out all over the ranges. You were as likely to get a gourmet coffee cart as you were the water rescue team tonight. Lance and I were it.
I studied what was left of the bridge. There was a massive log pressing against the piles, jumping around, revolving. How long it would stay in place – or what would happen when it broke loose – was anybody’s guess.
I turned back to the woman in the water. She was thin, pale, with fearful eyes and Gorgon hair, badly tossed about. She yelled what could only be a cry for help. A wave smacked her in the face and knocked her down. Please don’t let go, I willed. For a moment, all you could see was an arm clutching the doorframe, then her head bobbed up again, her mouth a frantic O in the foam. She was putting up a fight. But she could well have only seconds left, no matter what she did.
I stole a glance at Lance. Twenty years older than me, twenty kilos heavier, a heart-attack-in-waiting. I grabbed the harness and rescue rope from the boot.
‘Anchor me,’ I said, slipping into the gear.
Lance protested briefly, then saw my point. He secured the rope to a tree and organised the spectators into a human chain.
I stepped into the water and was immediately bowled over. Bloody hell, it was powerful. I felt like an egg at the bottom of a blender. The cold nearly knocked me senseless. After a minute bouncing my head about on the rocky bed, I found my feet and came up gasping. I copped a lungful of water and did what I could to spit it out. I pushed on into the creek, had to swim desperately for the last few metres.
As I drew close to the car, I heard Lance’s voice, a desperate warning.
I looked upstream. The log had broken free from the bridge and was whirling in our direction. I threw myself forward and seized hold of the woman just as the log slammed into the car and sent it tumbling downstream.
When I came up for air I made a frantic signal to Lance, who was already hauling us in. My feet were flailing wildly, finding nothing. The woman struggled briefly, panicking, then went limp, hopefully realising her struggle was only making things worse. The rope felt like the only thing between me and eternity. Finally, I touched the rocky bottom and pushed off. The civilians waded into the shallows and took the woman from my arms. I crawled up onto the bank and collapsed into the mud, lay there, heart racing, breath short.
I looked over to where the others were tending to the woman. She was about thirty, with flattened peroxide hair and numerous tattoos. She was staring up at the night sky, her mouth moving silently.
‘How is she?’ I asked.
‘Fucking ace,’ she grated through rattling teeth. A good sign. She caught my eye. ‘But thanks.’ That was an even better one.
Lance came back from the car with an armful of woollen blankets, a couple of which he wrapped around the woman. He passed me a spare and I leaned against a tree, still struggling to get my breath. My head was throbbing. My tongue tasted of blood, my feet were like lumps of wood.
‘How are you yourself?’ asked Lance, looking concerned.
‘Okay.’
‘Ambos are on the way.’
But the next car to come along was Inspector Dougherty’s BMW. He pulled over and walked down to where our little group had gathered. I climbed to my feet, then stumbled into the mud, face first.
‘You look like a drowned mouse,’ he said. ‘What happened here?’
‘Woman tried to cross the bridge, ended up in the water, boss,’ said Lance. ‘Jess pulled her out.’
Dougherty turned to me. ‘You okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘She did a bloody good job,’ Lance threw in.
Dougherty studied the creek. ‘Where’s the woman’s car?’
‘Somewhere downstream.’
He looked around, clearly trying to piece things together: the woman under the blanket, the roaring winds, the racing waters, the wet rope. He was a hard man to read, Dougherty: taciturn, blunt. I’d never seen him smile, even when he was welcoming me to the region. His face was pale and pudgy; like his name, it was mainly dough.
‘There’s an ambulance on my tail,’ he said. ‘Do you need it, Redpath?’
‘Nah – few bruises. Mainly just bloody cold.’
‘What time did you two start your shift?’
‘Eight this morning,’ said Lance.
‘Long enough. Get on home. That’s if you’ve got one, Redpath. You found somewhere to live yet?’
‘Got a place in Satellite, boss. Moved in yesterday.’
‘Then go and get some shut-eye.’
‘You got enough crew here?’
‘Highway Patrol and ambos are behind me. Fresh teams. They can take this. You get tired, you’ll make mistakes.’
Fair enough.
The Highway Patrol car appeared out of the darkness. Dougherty had a word with its occupants then turned back to us.
‘You’ve done a good job. Now piss off, the pair of you.’
That was encouragement enough for my partner and me. We climbed into the car and set out.
My first inkling that all was not right in Satellite came as we entered the town. It was the lights. There were none.
‘Bloody hell,’ Lance muttered. ‘Power’s out.’
Hardly surprising. Trees and power poles would be down all over the district, transformers blasted apart, live wires snarling on wet roads.
‘Wendy better have a hottie in the bed,’ mused Lance. ‘Either that or she’ll have to do the job herself.’
No hotties in my bed, I thought as I dropped him off at the station. Better find my thermo-nuclear long johns.
I switched the police car for my white HiLux Twin Cab and drove to my house on Shady Grove Road. I pulled up in the driveway and checked it out. No lights. Bugger.
The accommodation that came with the job was a flat above the bakery, but I couldn’t see much point in being in the bush if you were going to have to put up with your neighbours’ bread-making noises at three in the morning. Lance did a little asking round and came up with this place, a log cabin nestled among the manna gums on the outskirts of Satellite. It was a Forestry Commission summer crew bunkhouse that had been declared unfit for human habitation. That suited me fine; after ten years in the outback, I was barely fit for human habitation myself. Plus I was getting it at mates rates.
The ramifications of the power outage – the prospect of freezing to death – dawned on me as I walked up the steps. The cottage’s main source of warmth was a rattly old reverse-cycle unit – power-driven. There was an open fireplace and a rusty Coonara wood heater in the corner, but I hadn’t had a chance to collect any wood yet.
I glanced over the road. My nearest neighbours, across and a hundred metres down the road, were a retired couple named Rocco and Meg Teller. I’d said hello to him but hadn’t seen her yet. Apparently, she was often on the road, supplementing their pension by selling free-range eggs all over the district. There were no lights to be seen at their place either.
As I entered the front door a bat swooped around my head.
There was a blur of movement in the kitchen. I swung the torch at it. A fat rat scuttled across the floor, a spring in its step, an apple core in its mouth.
‘You’re welcome,’ I grunted.
When it stopped and smirked at me, I had a shot at it with a boot. The rodent zipped out of the torchlight and sprinted up a corner pole.
The cottage was basically a single room, with a cupboard and a bed to the left, a table and chairs to the right, a tiny wannabe-kitchen and bathroom at the back. The furniture came with the house, as did the ancient Kriesler Bakelite radio on a shelf beside the bed. I presumed it had been left there by some long-gone old man of the trees.
Icy needles of wind were zipping in through the numerous cracks in the walls and windows. A hot shower would be nice, but, without power, neither water nor heat were available. The only water source was a five-thousand-gallon tank filled from the roof, but it needed electricity to pump water up to the house. Actually, there was another water source. As I sat on the bed to remove my remaining boot, a heavy drop of water landed on my nose. I scanned the roof with my torch. There was a leak over the bed. The single blanket was damp. Not much I could do about that right now. I donned my fleeciest pyjamas and thickest socks and draped a couple of coats across the bed. I hadn’t got round to buying proper bedding yet.
I crawled under the blanket, clutching my ribs and rubbing my feet together, doing everything I could to generate a little heat. My hair was still damp, my nose a blue icicle, my breath a frozen ghost in the air above me.
My shivering gradually dissipated. The first ripples of warmth began to surface from within.
Please, I whispered to god knows what, give me the gift of sleep. If nothing else, it would be a way to escape the cold. Everything would look better in the light of day. Maybe I’d jump out of bed and go for an invigorating run through the bush or drop into the bakery and buy some breakfast.
My eyes closed. I felt my nerves beginning to unwind, the adrenaline wearing off, sleep stealing over me, seeping out into my limbs.
My eyes sprang open.
What was wrong?
Something had been hovering down in the backwoods of my brain. A disturbing image that only rose to the surface when I began to relax.
Wild winds, wet hair, black bark, blood. A crushed body.
The poor bastard killed by the falling tree at Wycliff Rise.
Something about that scene wasn’t right.
I replayed the episode in my head, trying to figure out what had brought me to this pass.
The ambos had their backs to me, doing what they could to give the guy a little dignity. The emergency service workers were dragging the torn frame back with a Halligan bar. Inspector Dougherty was talking into his radio, keeping one eye on the various emergency crews going about their business. The fireys were cutting up the tree, chainsaws screaming, steel-caps kicking. The tow-truck driver was standing next to his vehicle, cap down, collar up, waiting for the all-clear. Half-a-dozen neighbours or passers-by were looking on, their faces grim, their jackets blown about by the wind. Chances were they knew the victim.
One of the chainsaw operators took a break as his mate dragged away the last length of wood.
That was it. The wood, the tree. There was something wrong there. What sort of tree was it? It had rounded leaves and fibrous bark: a red box eucalypt. My young friend Possum Kelly had told me once that it was unusual for them to fall like that. They’ve got long tap roots, which makes them relatively stable. I sniffed suspiciously. There was something else wrong with the scene, but I couldn’t see what.
I shook my head and cursed quietly. This wasn’t going to do much for my popularity, but I had no choice. Follow your hunches: that was the only way I knew.
I sat up in bed. The room hadn’t got any warmer. I reached for my phone, punched the number with quivering fingers.
‘Boss,’ I said.
‘Redpath,’ snapped Dougherty. ‘You’re meant to be asleep.’ An engine roared. He was driving.
‘Have Forensics finished at Wycliff Rise yet?’
‘Heading for town as we speak.’
‘They have to get back out there.’
I heard the engine ease off. ‘What!’
Only a solitary word, but the tone spoke volumes.
‘Something’s not right.’
‘Yeah, you.’ The engine hushed. He’d pulled over. ‘Your little dip in the river must have scrambled your brains. I’ll overlook this. Go back to sleep.’
He killed the call.
I lay there for five minutes, shivering, for want of anything better to do. Willing myself to forget it. But I couldn’t.
Finally, ever so reluctantly, I dragged my weary body out of bed. The lino was icy underfoot. I tried the lamp. Still nothing. I did a few half-hearted taekwondo exercises in a vain attempt to work a little life back into my bones, then kitted up by torchlight and left the house.