30

MORRIE HAD put an ancient cast-iron kettle on the wood stove. Loretta and Ben were last seen wandering off, holding hands, to some secluded place on the farm. Fifty acres, Morrie told me. Not his, he said, he was a caretaker while the owners were having a rare break.

The house used tank rather than town water, and, judging from the candles and lanterns around the place, no mains power. But the little house was clean and tidy. The bare floors were swept. Filtered sunlight shone through large windows on the kitchen table, antique scrubbed pine with a drawer. Morrie had set out floral tea cups. He took a few smaller pieces of split log from a basket on the floor and threw them into the glowing wood stove. The air carried a pleasant tang of wood smoke. It was the perfect off-the-grid hideout. I was tempted to stay.

‘How did you pull off the escape?’ I asked.

‘Talbot farmers’ market. I bought some veggies, a few plants, some jars of pickles.’ He gestured to the jars on the table. ‘Parked the truck round the corner. Told the guard I had a crook back, and I needed Ben’s help to carry them to me car.’

He poured some hot water into a teapot, gave it a swirl, tipped it down the sink.

‘Ben got in the back, and I drove off. Easy as you like.’

Once he’d made the tea, he went into the pantry and cut a few slices of boiled fruitcake. The tea was strong, and the cake heaven, sending me into a spiral of nostalgia — Sunday visits, distant relations, country football meets — that was not entirely traumatic.

‘Any spare vehicles around here that go?’ I asked. ‘I need to get back to Woolburn.’

He took a set of keys off a nail in the door frame. ‘Drive a manual?’

An hour later, the good people of Woolburn celebrated my return with a tickertape parade. Except there were no cheering crowds, and the ticker tape was thousands of pieces of paper, swirling around in what I chose to believe was a celebratory flurry.

I drove to a quiet street behind the pub and parked the white nineteen sixty-four EH Holden — three on the tree, windscreen visor, driver’s door visor, and venetian blinds on the back window. As I walked around to the pub, the wind swept up a pile of the loose papers, and one stuck to my leg. I peeled it off. Kelton McHugh: a steady hand. I surveyed the main road of Woolburn. McHugh leaflets as far as the eye could see, gathering in damp muddy piles in the gutters. People drove over them and they stuck to their tyres. A man in an apron was sweeping them away from the front of the post office.

‘Good bit of rain,’ he said.

I nodded. ‘How about that McHugh, eh?’ I said, holding up a leaflet. ‘Claims to care about the environment, and look at this! What a tosser.’

He seemed shocked and turned his back on me.

I walked to the Woolburn Hotel and found Freya’s mother in the cupboard used as the accommodation reception.

‘Had a few people enquiring after you,’ she said.

‘Yes, thank you. If it’s alright, I’d like to check out and back in under a fake name.’

She didn’t blink. ‘No worries, I’ll put you in a different room, too.’ While she adjusted her books, I asked how Freya was.

‘Good,’ she said.

I took the key and went up to my room. Lime-green walls, orange carpet, mauve bedspread, a good view of the street. I stretched out on the bedspread with my phone. The hotel’s wi-fi was up, and I went to the Corrections Victoria website and stared at the photo of Mark Lacy, the executive with ginger hair. If only Colin Slade was still alive to corroborate my hunch that he was Paul.

News of Ben was scant. A low-risk minimum security prisoner who absconded on a day trip to the market was not going to send alarm bells ringing around the state. I put the phone down and stared at the cobwebs above me. How do I raise the issue of heroin with Brophy? A part of me clung to the hope that he was genuinely very ill. If I was wrong, I might offend him. If I was right …

Someone tapped on the door.

‘What?’

‘Bloke downstairs reckons someone’s hit your car,’ said a male voice.

The vintage Holden had been in perfect condition when Morrie Swindon handed me the keys. I cursed my luck, grabbed my bag, and slouched down the stairs. I walked out onto the street, wondering who had seen me driving Morrie Swindon’s car. Then I pulled up short. There he was, Shane-fucking-Farquhar, leaning on his Commodore, chewing a nail.

‘Hardy, you vindictive cow. Where’re you going?’

‘Farquhar, you brainless slob. I’m checking on my car.’

‘That fucked up Mazda of your brother’s?’

I ignored him and walked around to the back of the pub. The EH appeared unharmed. I walked around it, all the panels were still in mint condition. Then the penny dropped: someone had wanted me out of my room. I turned to go, but Farquhar blocked my path.

‘Thanks to you,’ he whined, ‘the deal with Kylie’s on hold.’

His flipping deal was the least of my worries. ‘Thanks for letting me know.’

‘Once again, thanks to you, I’ve lost out.’

I tried to walk around him, he stepped in front of me. Our eyes locked, we stood facing each other in the deserted street, a Wimmera stand-off. If a tumbleweed had rolled by, I would not have been surprised.

‘How’d you find out I was back in Woolburn?’ I said.

‘Bloke in the post office.’

Never mind Facebook, the real threat to privacy was busy-bodies in country towns.

Farquhar folded his arms. ‘You deliberately left the farm paperwork at home, didn’t you?’

‘The truth is, no. I brought the folder with the papers to the farm, when I opened it, someone had taken …’ Loretta! I connected that dot to another, and a picture began to form. ‘Shane, really, it wasn’t deliberate at all.’

He sniffed, moving wet ick in his nasal passages, and spat it at my feet.

I nearly gagged. ‘Well, thanks for the chat, but I’ve got things to do …’

A crowbar he’d been concealing behind his leg clattered to the ground. He picked it up.

‘Nice car, this. Shame if something happen to it.’

‘It’s not mine.’

‘Then you have some explaining to do.’ He swung the crowbar and smashed the side mirror off.

I froze.

‘My message to you, Hardy, is simple. Go back to Melbourne, get the papers, and bring them the fuck back here. Take them straight to Kylie, like, this weekend. Tell her the proposed land-sharing partnership between her and your pal Shane is a top idea. Got it?’

I nodded. ‘Got it.’

Shane smirked. I reached into my handbag and took three steps towards him. A glorious cloud of confusion came over him. I held the yellow taser in both hands and fired the cartridge at his crotch. The shriek stuck in his throat as his teeth clenched and his body seized up. I held the charge a little longer. Then the current stopped, and he dropped to the ground. He rolled around, clutching his groin, moaning and groaning like a big sook.

I bent to him, used a low voice. ‘My message to you, Shane, is simple. Get fucked.’

I gathered up the wires, dropped the taser in a nearby wheelie-bin, and kept walking. There was so much more to say to him, but I didn’t. When I reached the corner, I turned to look back. Farquhar was hunched over on all fours, then he staggered upright. Gingerly, legs wide, he picked up the crowbar. Then he stepped, one foot and the next, and got into his car. Without gunning the engine, or a burnout, or any primal roar of man-car hybrid, he made a timid U-turn, replete with indicator.

I hadn’t skipped in a long time, not since I was a child. Yet here I was, weaving through the snowdrifts of McHugh leaflets. It was a rare delight. And there was no wiping the grin off my yap. I couldn’t wait to tell Phuong: And then I tasered his …

No, I couldn’t tell her any of it. There were legal issues, complications. But maybe one day I’d tell her because, damn, I needed to tell someone.