I was rolling home from Wycliff Rise when my attention was caught by a solitary figure walking across a bushy paddock on the outskirts of town. She was wearing blue jeans and a grey jacket and carrying a straw basket in one hand and a long stick in the other. She had her back to me and was gazing at the ground, but I recognised her straightaway. She stopped, scraped at the ground then knelt to examine something.
I pulled over, got out and climbed through the fence. Lost in her thoughts, or her search, she didn’t notice me until I drew near.
‘Hey, Lucinda,’ I said.
She spun round and stood up. Her eyes narrowed, then turned to the horizon. Looking for an escape route, or making sure we were alone?
‘Hello, officer,’ she replied.
‘Jess will do,’ I said. ‘What brings you out here?’
‘We’re just fossicking around.’
‘We?’
‘Bailey’s out there somewhere,’ she said, nodding at the bushland at the back of the paddock. The comment sent a little shiver down my spine. The memory of that arrow still rattled through my brain.
‘I saw him at the market yesterday,’ I said. ‘Hooning around with a bunch of boys on bikes.’
She scowled. ‘I’m sorry about that. I try to keep an eye on him, but he slips away. He’s going through a stage.’
I took a closer look at the basket in her hands. As well as a number of natural history specimens – cicada shells, fungi, a snake skin – there were several items that suggested she was doing more than mere rambling: a hand lens, a plant press and a field guide to fungi.
‘Looks like you mean business,’ I said, gesturing at the contents of the basket.
Her face came as close as I’d seen to lighting up.
‘We’re always trying to learn about the local ecology,’ she explained. ‘The botany, the bird and plant life. Even underground – the mycorrhizal network is amazing.’
‘Mycorrhizal?’
‘Where the fungal roots interact with a plant’s.’
I should introduce this girl to my friends at Canticle Creek, I thought. They might find they had a few things in common.
I indicated the surrounding countryside. ‘And is this all your land?’
She frowned. ‘Are you going to arrest me for trespassing?’
‘Just asking. You sound like you know your way around the place.’
She nodded. ‘It belongs to our neighbours. The Chambers. But Mr Chambers knows we’re here. He’s given us permission to come and collect specimens. Our family puts a lot of emphasis on understanding our environment, being able to look after ourselves. To live independently, if we ever have to.’
‘Hence Bailey and his crossbow?’
She looked at me with knitted brows.
‘I wasn’t joking when I said if he’d wanted to hit you, he would have. He’s got an excellent eye.’
‘Have you asked him why he chose me for a target?’
She shook her head, seemed a little lost for words. A black wind whistled through the upper reaches of the trees that lined the paddock. I noticed a blur of movement in the bushland adjoining the paddock and Bailey stepped out into the open. He was maybe a hundred metres away, but that was enough for me to note, with some concern, a bow in his hands. Not the crossbow, thank god. A traditional recurve hunting bow. At least it was by his side, not raised and ready for action.
Lucinda read my face.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘He’s only using light arrows. He likes to practise with them, but he knows not to kill anything when he’s with me.’
She called him over. He came closer, suspicion in his every move. He stopped when he was about halfway, close enough for me to read the hostility in his expression.
Lucinda sighed and said quietly, ‘Bailey’s been a bit hyper lately.’
I asked her if she went to school locally.
‘No, I’m down at Presbyterian Ladies, in year eleven.’
I wasn’t surprised to hear that. Everything about her – the house, the voice, even the natural history interest – said private school.
When Bailey finally joined us, his sister insisted he greet me. He did so grudgingly. He had a handful of objects – feathers, eggs, a bird’s skull bone and some fungi – which he placed in her basket. I tried a joke about dropping into their place for a mushroom omelette but he wasn’t amused.
‘We didn’t have time to thank you the other day,’ said Lucinda, maybe trying to compensate for her brother’s rudeness. ‘That was kind of you, not telling our father about Bailey.’
Kind or stupid, I thought but didn’t say. If Bailey got into more trouble, did something even worse, it would be my fault.
‘Does your father have any idea of what actually happened that day?’ I asked.
‘I certainly wasn’t saying anything,’ said Lucinda. ‘But, after you left, he asked a lot of questions.’
‘About what?’
She frowned. ‘You.’
‘Do you think he believed my story? It was the best I could come up with on the fly.’
‘You did brilliantly. You’re obviously an accomplished liar.’
‘It’s one of the skills you develop when you’re a woman trespassing in a man’s world.’
She almost laughed, but then a look of alarm shot across her face. I followed her eyes. A car had just pulled up on the road that ran along the far side of the paddock. It was a maroon BMW.
‘Oh my god,’ she muttered. ‘He was coming to pick us up, but he’s early. Maybe he won’t have recognised you,’ she said hopefully. Both of us knew that was unlikely. ‘You’d better go.’
She waved at the BMW then joined Bailey as they walked across the paddock to meet their father. I turned away, head low, hands in pockets. I returned to my own car, thinking, again, that there was something discomfiting about that family. I resolved to drop into the Satellite Police Station the next day and see if Lance had done any follow-up on them.
As I drove home, I tuned in to Radio National and a familiar song came on, one I knew from my time in the Territory: Kev Carmody, singing ‘On the Wire’. It was a song about Country and connection. Country, connection. I wondered how they fitted into my investigation. There was no question they did. They underlie everything, fitted everywhere. I thought about Bailey and his father. I thought about some of the other characters I’d encountered in recent days: toxic waste dumpers, drug runners, midnight assassins, a grief-stricken poet. They were all manifestations of their environment. Hardscrabble, lightning-struck country produced hardscrabble, lightning-struck individuals.