2

I woke, sweaty, my heart hammering. That dream again: I’m trapped. Somewhere small and dark. The smell of vomit and old sweat. I can’t breathe. I scrabble with my fingernails, trying to claw my way out, but the walls close in on me.

I lay in bed a moment, aiming to get my breathing back to normal. I should probably see someone about that dream—get myself analysed. At least it’d give everyone something new to talk about. Heard the latest? Cass is off her head.

I got up; peered out my bedroom window. The sky was slashed with the lace ribbon of a jet trail. I live behind the shop: it’s just me. It’s been more noticeably just me since Brad moved out to study eco-bio-whatsit at uni. Brad’s my youngest. It’s dispiriting the way you bring up your offspring to be independent and then they go and actually be it, miles away. The last time Brad came home for a weekend was aeons ago.

After a quick breakfast, I phoned Claire and lined her up to mind the shop, then headed out to my car.

My sky-blue Toyota Corolla, might, like myself, be past its heyday, but it too is still a goer. I drove through town, past the closed hardware shop, its dusty windows covered in graffiti. Past the old town hall, our own leaning tower of Pisa, propped up along one side with steel girders.

It was in the town hall, in its better days, that I first met Piero. A Saturday-night disco, way back. Him in his green Miller shirt, me in a silky white dress and long pearls from the op shop. It could be said I was slightly on the rebound that night. Leo and I had just split up, after Ernie had given me a little briefing on Leo’s extracurricular activities.

I was seventeen, blue eye-shadowed and red-lipsticked and more than ready to get Leo out of my system.

Piero was tall, dark, handsome—and there, importantly. A rebound-one-night-stand that turned into a more permanent arrangement, thanks to his overactive fertility.

I passed the silos and took the turn onto the highway, heading south.

The weathered yellow sign to our town flashed by: Rusty Bore—Original Home of the Mallee Farm Days. It’s our only claim to fame. Pretty sad given that we lost the Farm Days to Hustle back in ’91. Ernie reckons we should replace it with a sign that says, Rusty Bore—Not Dead Yet.

Acres of wheat stubble drifted by, punctuated by telephone poles. Twenty minutes later I reached the sixty sign outside Hustle, glimpsed my speedo and slowed down. Glanced nervously in my rear-view mirror: you never know where Dean is at any given moment.

Dean’s been pretty stressed since his transfer to Muddy Soak. Melissa hates living there and frankly you don’t want Melissa unhappy. Maybe that’s the reason Dean’s thrown himself into the job with so much enthusiasm. Jaywalking fines, for instance. Muddy Soak’s only got one set of traffic lights, and Dean likes to hang around there with a little clipboard. He’s even fined one of his relatives, as in me. There are times when I wonder who it is in this family Dean thinks he takes after. Not his mother, that’s for sure.

I headed past the red-brick post office, the Commonwealth Bank, the newsagent. Hustle has an unwashed look, seemingly indifferent to the several decades that have drifted by since the 1970s. I passed the TV shop, its broken front window ‘repaired’ with orange cellophane.

I parked and headed into the Slick Café. Marched over the black and white tiles; past the orange booths and the rest of the 1950s fit-out. Laminex-topped tables, jukebox, aluminium milkshake cups, you name it. They stopped short of the smallpox and polio.

Only one customer: a man, sitting at a booth up the back, hunched over a phone. Dark messy hair; unshaven. Wearing a stained grey trench coat. A bit like Columbo, only even scruffier. There was a green overnight bag by his feet.

‘Gary Kellett?’

He looked up; nodded.

I slid into the booth seat opposite him.

The waitress, Jacinta, swung her freckles and pony tail over to our table. I ordered a strong cup of tea, milk, no sugar.

‘I’ll have a beer, thanks. Desert lager.’ Gary pushed his phone into his pocket.

‘Err, we don’t serve alcohol at breakfast.’

‘I’ll be ordering lunch shortly.’

‘Sorry, kitchen won’t be ready for lunch for a couple of hours. Do you a tea?’

He scowled; clenched a hand into a white-knuckled fist on the table.

Jacinta shot back behind the counter and got on with making the tea.

Gary pulled a silver flask out of a trench coat pocket, took a sip, slipped it back.

‘So, ah, what can I do for you, Gary?’

‘It’s about Natalie. Her birthday yesterday. She would have been twenty.’ He looked down at the table.

‘I’m sorry.’

The tea arrived: Gary’s in a blue teapot, matching blue cup; mine in pink.

He pulled out his flask and emptied it into his cup, then took a swig.

‘I still catch myself expecting to see her, hear her voice.’ He put down the cup. ‘Anyway, you come highly recommended.’

‘Edna?’

‘Yeah. Look, all I want is justice for Natalie. Surely that’s not too much to ask?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘She was murdered three months ago. Twenty-eighth of January, to be precise.’ He stared down at his cup a moment, then looked back up at me.

‘I’ve got nowhere with the police. Bloody nowhere. If I could just find…something tangible. Something to make them reopen the investigation.’

‘Gary,’ my voice was gentle, ‘why do you think Natalie was murdered?’

There was a crashing sound behind me. I whirled around. Jacinta stood there, a hand at her mouth, smithereens of broken glass around her feet. ‘I’ll just get the broom.’ She scuttled off.

‘Natalie’s car crash wasn’t an accident. She was a careful driver. Natalie was always a good girl,’ he said.

For God’s sake. Why is it always so bloody vital that a girl be good? You never hear anyone say, ‘Oh, she’s a bit wild, but girls will be girls, you know,’ with a careless little spread-out of the hands and a light, accepting laugh.

Swishing noises from behind me as Jacinta swept up the glass.

I cleared my throat. ‘No one can be careful all the time.’

‘Of course, I know that. But she was worried, really worried, about something.’

If being worried indicated you were about to be murdered, the citizens of Rusty Bore would have the homicide squad run off their feet.

‘And she’d stopped talking to me. For weeks, this had gone on. Normally she told me everything.’

He really thought his nineteen-year-old daughter told him everything?

‘I’m sure it was something—or someone—at work. Natalie was a journalist at the Muddy Soak Cultivator.’

The weekly paper in Muddy Soak. Heavily into heritage, thus the weird title. Makes it sound less like a newspaper and more like a tractor brochure. Owned by the Fitzgerald family and has been for generations.

The thought of the Fitzgeralds never helps me relax. Breathe, just breathe, I told myself. This won’t have anything to do with Glenda.

‘Shane Millson, the editor, he was up to something. I don’t know what, but he was bloody unhelpful when I phoned that night.’

‘What night?’

‘The night of Natalie’s crash. I phoned Millson to find out where she was—it was late, really late, and Natalie hadn’t come home. I knew she had a deadline, but it wouldn’t normally keep her as late as that.

‘Millson had no idea where Natalie was and didn’t care, he told me. I asked him what the hell he meant by that. He just said, “She walked out on the job today.”

‘“What do you mean?” I said. It made no sense. Natalie loved that job. Bastard told me he had a deadline and hung up.’ Gary took another gulp from his hipflask-charged cup. ‘I waited a bit longer, hoping she was on her way home. After another hour, I tried calling her friends, but no one knew where she was. Finally, I phoned the police. Reassuring platitudes.’

My phone buzzed. Dean. Well, he’d have to wait a tick. I put it away.

‘And then I saw a post-it note on the kitchen floor. It must have fallen off the fridge.’

‘What did it say?’

‘That she’d been called away suddenly for work. She didn’t say what about or where.’

‘But hadn’t she just walked out on the job?’

‘Yeah, it didn’t make sense.’

‘And you told Dean, err, the police all this?’

‘Of course. I called as soon as I found her note. Got the reassurance routine again. Then, a couple of hours later, he came to my door, took off his hat and said her car had been found by the road…’ He looked down at the table, blinking.

Jacinta floated by and asked if I’d like another cuppa. I shook my head and she bustled off.

Another buzz from my phone. ‘Sorry, Gary, hang on.’

A text from Dean. Why aren’t you answering? Call me.

Yes, when I get a bloody minute, Dean. I have a life, you know. I put the phone away.

‘Millson said afterwards he had no idea why Natalie had written that note. He hadn’t sent her anywhere to do a story. Especially given that she’d chucked in the job.’ His voice rose. ‘But Natalie would never lie to me. And why the hell would she walk out like that, anyway? That job was everything to her. She worked so hard to get it.’

‘Millson say why Natalie resigned?’

‘Personality clash, he said. Well, I know she didn’t find him easy to work with. He’s a stickler for the old ways. Insisted she learn shorthand, which she wasn’t too impressed with. But she’d never leave. Not like that. And before you ask, no, she didn’t take drugs. And no, she wasn’t mentally ill.’

‘Well, how would you know that, Gary?’

‘I just bloody know, OK?’

‘Your…Natalie’s mum have any ideas?’

‘Ange died twelve years ago.’

‘Right. What did, ah, the police officer say about all this?’

‘He suggested I seek counselling.’

‘But he did…look into what Natalie was doing that night?’

‘He spoke to Millson, who gave him the same story.’ Gary stared at his hands a moment. ‘If it wasn’t work, what was Natalie doing?’

I cleared my throat. I felt for him, of course. But all Gary had was a parent’s rage, and that was probably at himself because Natalie hadn’t trusted him with whatever was worrying her. An Olympic long jump from there to murder.

‘Gary, look, it’s pretty unlikely I’ll be able to tell you what was on Natalie’s mind. And even if I could, it mightn’t make you any happier.’

‘One piece of evidence, that’s all I need. Then surely the police will have to reopen the investigation.’ His voice was a whisper. ‘I need to understand what happened to her. Please? Natalie was my only child.’ He looked down; lots of rapid blinking.

I groaned. I’ve always been a sucker for a man in tears.

‘OK,’ I heard myself saying. ‘I’ll try talking to the cops.’ I wasn’t so sure about that. Dean can be very pernickety about minor details like private investigator licences. And parental interference.

‘If I don’t have something for you by the end of the week, we’ll call it quits.’

‘Thank you,’ he whispered. Reached down, picked up the overnight bag and put it on the table. ‘Take this. Natalie had it in the car with her.’

He had a worryingly hopeful–grateful expression on his face.

‘Don’t get your hopes up too much, Gary. Just a week, OK?’

‘Yes. But Edna told me you never give up. That’s exactly what I need.’

I thought about that as I walked out to my car, lugging Natalie’s bag. It’s true I don’t like giving up; a bloke once told me that people shouldn’t underestimate my tenacity. I didn’t mind that. Although I did mind when he tried to kill me.