When I got home I decided it was time to clean out the cobwebs. I changed into trainers and trackpants and set out for a punishing run through the bush. I felt fresh and keen and made good time. I was sprinting up the home stretch, opposite the neighbours’ place, when I was stopped by the sight of an axe-wielding mad woman charging at me.
The woman was storming down Rocco’s drive with a wild expression on her face and the axe held high. She was heavily built, maybe in her early fifties, wearing blue gumboots and a red beanie.
This is going to be interesting, I thought. Fight or flight? I figured I should be able to outrun her, given her gumboots and build, but I couldn’t let her rampage around the neighbourhood with an axe. She may have just dismembered Rocco, for all I knew. I would try to disarm her, hoping that she didn’t disarm me in the process.
‘You little bugger,’ she yelled, waving the weapon around like a berserker.
Bit rude, I thought. Not that little; 173 centimetres last time I checked. Then I heard a squawk and noticed a sleek red fox with a hysterical rooster in its mouth slip out of the bushes that lined the drive and set out across the adjoining paddock. The woman changed course and took off after it. She shouted again and put on such a burst of speed that the fox decided discretion was the better part of dinner. It dropped its victim and shimmied off into the forest. The rooster picked itself up, shook itself off, did a wobbly wander then started pecking at imaginary bits of grain.
The woman drew to a halt, took a deep breath then leaned over, gasping.
‘Get on home,’ she ordered the bird, which puffed its chest, spread its wings and began to wander off in the same direction as the fox.
‘Not that way, you bloody moron,’ she called, steering it back towards the chook shed with a well-aimed boot. Only then did she notice me standing on the other side of the road.
‘Hello there,’ I called, relieved to find that I was dealing with a feisty woman defending her flock and not an axe-wielding maniac.
She did a double take and looked around warily. She was wearing a bulky mohair cardigan and a flowing green dress.
‘Jesse Redpath,’ I added with a neighbourly smile. ‘You’ll be Mrs Teller then?’
‘Meg,’ she said at last. I came closer and shook her hand. She turned away, reluctant to look me in the eye. Her own eyes, I noticed, were a deep shade of green.
‘How’s business?’ I asked.
She looked puzzled.
‘Rocco told me you sell eggs.’
‘I see. Yes, it’s going okay. Be going better if the bloody foxes would leave us alone. Just about impossible to produce free-range eggs with them on the prowl. Look at that one,’ she exclaimed, nodding in the direction the recently departed rooster-thief had gone. ‘Snatching them in broad daylight.’ She looked back up the drive, down which her husband was now walking. ‘Anyway,’ said Meg, ‘you’ll have to excuse me. I’m late getting started on my deliveries.’
‘Hey there, Jess,’ called Rocco as he drew near. ‘How’s your poor little bashed-up house coming along?’
‘Keeping the weather out – thanks to you and the rest of the team.’
‘Happy to come over again,’ he replied. ‘Just let me know when you want a hand.’
Meg was already on her way, walking back towards the shed. She glanced back at me and I was struck, again, by the brilliance of her eyes. And I realised where I’d seen them before. Last time we met, Meg had been sitting in a purple tent with her face veiled and an array of crystals laid out before her.
‘Just a minute, Meg!’ I called out. ‘Could I have a quick word?’
‘I really have to get going. I’ve got customers waiting.’
‘It will only take a—’
But she was already halfway up the drive, head forward, long legs swallowing up the metres until she vanished into the back of the property. Rocco seemed a little embarrassed. A few seconds later a van came round the corner of the house and headed down the drive. Meg was barely visible through the tinted windows. She gave us a curt farewell wave as she turned out onto the road.
‘Bye, love,’ Rocco called.
We stood there watching until the van disappeared down the road to town.
‘That was a dramatic appearance,’ I said. ‘Started with a fox and finished with a getaway car.’
He looked at me apologetically. ‘Meg gets a little anxious around new people.’
‘Probably sensible. Tell me – does she ever put on a silk scarf and go reading crystals at the market?’
Rocco emitted a sigh and cleared his throat.
‘Aye, yes, she’s been known to do that. She’s a spiritual explorer, our Meg. The hills around here are full of groups who think of themselves as spiritual explorers in one way or another.’ He smiled. ‘I should know: Meg’s been in most of them. She was evangelical Christian when I first met her, but that all went to the shithouse. Since then, she’s been playing the field. Buddhism, astrology, witchcraft – Wiccan, they call it. Inner Totem Pole Chakra journeys. Vipassana meditation. Crystals are the latest, but maybe they’re the best. Or the least harmful.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘When I first met Meg, she was in a bad way. That’s probably why she was happy to pair off with an old codger like me – I was something solid, with a steady job and a warm house. I was even responsible for the crystals.’
‘How so?’
‘I used to be a gouger up in Coober Pedy, had a box of ’em in the shed. She used to do things with them: clean and polish them, cut them open to highlight the colour. After a while she started to say they gave her peace of mind, told her things. And who am I to say they don’t? At least a crystal doesn’t come with a pack of priests in pulpits trying to protect their turf.’
I had to agree with him there. ‘Yes, that’s my trouble with organised religion: the demarcation disputes. That and the homophobic fellers in dresses. But tell me something, Rocco. When I met Meg in the tent, she said something about a drowning woman and a dying horseman. Do you know what that was about?’
He shook his head. ‘Never said anything like that to me. But if she said it, she meant it. People think she’s away with the fairies, but she’s sharp – dismiss her at your peril. And she gets around. Sometimes I think the crystals are just a front, her real power is in those deadly green eyes. She’s like Sherlock Holmes: she notices things other people miss.’
‘Does she know I’m a police officer?’
‘That’s an example. She was the one who told me, the day you moved in.’
‘She seemed rather keen to be out of my company just now.’
‘Like I said, she’s anxious around people until she gets to know them.’
‘Yeah, but she’s happy to sit in a tent and read the fortunes of strangers.’
‘That’s because she’s in disguise. She’s like an actor: a different person when she’s on stage.’
If Meg really was that well attuned to local developments and knew I was a cop, maybe she’d been trying to warn me of something she’d picked up in her travels, to give me information without making it too obvious where it had come from.
‘Can you do me a favour, Rocco?’
‘Sure.’
‘When Meg comes back, could you tell her I’d love a little chat? It can be as private and confidential as she wants.’
Rocco had a disarming smile.
‘Of course.’