The walk was mainly puddles and mud for the first five hundred metres, then patchy concrete as we hit the scruffy outer houses of the town. If I do get thrown out of the force, I decided, maybe I’ll set up a lawn-mowing business – there was plenty to be done. Then again, would anybody have the money to pay me?
Flinders hesitated when we approached the swinging doors of the pub. There was a perky, porky terrier reclining by the entrance, its balls dangling like a set of second-hand punching bags. The two dogs sniffed each other out but didn’t find much to get excited about so they plonked down and contemplated life from the ageing canine perspective.
There were maybe a dozen people in there, which seemed a decent crowd for a winter’s day in Satellite. I wasn’t the only one in need of a little warmth and nourishment. A trio of old-timers were in the back bar lapping up their first for the day and shouting at each other, whether in anger or deafness was hard to say. The general air was one of beef, beer and flying phlegm. A raucous roadworks crew were hacking at their steaks, a rubber-eyed drunk was trying without success to chat up a couple of checkout chicks from the store. A fellow in a moth-eaten lumber jacket and an unravelling beanie bit into a bun with broken teeth.
But the fire was crackling, the jukebox was pumping out Cold Chisel – ‘Flame Trees’ – and Annie J was firing up the espresso machine. I’d only been in here a couple of times, but that was enough for her to get to know my habits.
‘Spotted you coming down the path with a thirsty look on your face,’ she explained as she poured my coffee. ‘Are we eating or just drinking?’
‘Both,’ I said.
Libby Walker, Annie’s partner in life as well as business, appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. ‘Hey, Jess,’ she called, then she spotted my companion. ‘Dog yours?’
‘No, he’s just a boarder,’ I assured her. ‘He is a border collie, after all.’
She smiled and flicked a couple of bones at the animals. ‘The usual?’
‘Yes thanks.’ The past couple of visits I’d had the beer-battered fish and it was bloody good. Apparently, it had become my ‘usual’.
She returned to the kitchen.
I took a seat by the fire and a sip of the coffee. Both warmed the cockles. The Satellite pub was small and cosy, with smoke-stained, wooden panels and clerestory windows that, at least during the day, delivered the multitudes of light you need to survive in a timber-shrouded town like Satellite. The pub was one of the few buildings in town to survive the conflagrations of Black Friday in 1939 and Black Saturday seventy years later. Legend had it that whenever a threat loomed, the entire population rushed to defend it. The same, alas, could not be said of the cop shop – had that been under threat, they would have set up the folding chairs and passed round the popcorn.
When I’d polished off the meal I stood at the window and looked out over the town. Satellite had a winter-green patina to it this afternoon. The river made its way through the town moodily, like a trail of tears shed by the snow-capped crags in the distance. The church was a huddle of hilltop spires looming over the misty valley. A big blue twin-cab pulled into the car park and disgorged a stringy quartet of long-necked timber workers. One or two of them glanced my way suspiciously: word of my occupation was getting round.
The coffee machine was roaring like a Force 10 gale, with Annie at the controls. ‘Another one?’ she signalled.
‘Why not?’ I shrugged. Her coffees had a way of vanishing down your throat and reappearing in your synapses and neurons, giving new energy to whatever you were working on.
I returned to my table and started going over my notes. Annie delivered the coffee and glanced at the pages in front of me.
‘A working lunch, is it, Jess?’
‘Just writing up some case notes.’
‘I presume you were caught up in the Raph Cambric business?’
I swallowed. ‘Kind of.’
‘Poor old Raph. But poor old Nash as well,’ she said. ‘I’d always thought he was a decent bloke.’
I looked at Annie with new interest. ‘Do you know him well?’
‘Dunno that anybody knows Nash well. I’d see him round, sure. Come to town every week or two, stock up on supplies, pick up the mail. Occasionally he’d even drop in for a drink, but he kept to himself. He’d sit by the fire or out on the verandah, depending on the season, drink a slow beer then disappear. I felt sorry for him. Poor bugger couldn’t win. One half of the town hated him because he’d killed that feller up at Horse Thief, the other half felt the same because he’d been a cop.’
‘Has he lived round here for long?’
She shook her head. ‘I heard he inherited the farm from his grandpa, Matty Rankin. Now there was a decent old bloke. Used to come in here for a pie and a beer every Friday. Died a few years ago, but the place was abandoned until Nash took it over.’
I wondered why the inheritance had skipped a generation. What became of Nash’s parents? Did their presumed involvement in the ‘kooky church’ have anything to do with it?
I asked Annie if she knew much more about Nash’s family background but she shook her head. She’d heard that Matty had had a daughter, and that there’d been a falling out. She’d been a teenage tearaway, then she got into drugs and, even worse in Annie’s eyes, god-bothering.
‘Do you know anything about the god-botherers?’ I asked her.
‘Jesus, honey, I wouldn’t have the foggiest. They’re all the same to me. God and I have a rule of mutual ignorance: I ignore him and he ignores me.’
I asked if she could tell me more about the death of Leon Glazier at Horse Thief Creek, but she shook her head. She hadn’t known him, but she suspected some of her patrons would have. He’d worked in IT, been the go-to man for any local Luddites trying to work out which end of the computer was which. She said she’d ask around.
‘Thanks,’ I said, returning to my notes. ‘Appreciate it.’