Daylight. The sun rose turning the land and everything on it from black to violet to orange to yellow like a bruise slowly fading in time. Emmaline was certain that the memory of this night wouldn’t fade quickly.
No one had responded to the gunshot. There had been no shouts, no search parties.
With the rising sun came the heat. Her problem remained. A dead body and ten hungry animals. Ready to pounce and reclaim their meal. An idea arose. From her pocket she fished out the matchbook Matty had given her. His number. That had been a new experience, like some hard-boiled noir where the leading man gives his number to a damsel in distress. But Matty was no leading man and she was no damsel in distress. Just a damsel with a problem she now knew how to solve.
Gathering some twigs and dried leaves from a straggle of trees the dingoes weren’t huddled in, she constructed a small fire near the body. Splitting the six matches in half to give herself two attempts, she struck three in conjunction. The grey-topped matches fizzled into life. Placing them beneath the kindling of dried spinifex grass, it caught immediately, smoking for a few seconds before bursting into flame. She piled on more twigs and a couple of dead branches, watching as they blackened and finally caught fire.
Praying that the unnerving presence of fire would hold the dogs off for a while, Emmaline sprinted back to the caravan, over the sand dunes, rocks and tufts of spinifex, her legs running through treacle. Reaching it she grabbed her keys and sped off in the 4x4 barrelling towards Hurton, one eye on the road and one on the phone. Close to Hurton, one bar flashed up. Braking suddenly and searing two dark tyre marks into the tarmac she called it in, her breathlessness causing a slight panic at HQ as if she was the one in trouble. She assured them that she was just fine. But that Lorcan Maguire wasn’t.
Hanging up, she dragged the vehicle around and headed back to Kallayee, back to where she hoped the fire was still warding off the hungry scavengers.