The Red Heart:
Speculative Australian Stories
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Stories: 'The Long Weekend', 'Baby Perfect', 'Beach Cricket', 'Big Change', 'It All Ends Here', 'Hope', 'Blood Omen', 'Afternoon's'
Genre: various The anthology is a collection of stories across different genre, all with an Australian flavour. The stories range through contemporary murder, space and supernatural horror, speculative scifi and Australian yarn. Two stories were published in anthologies from Altair Australia. The full anthology was published on Amazon in 2016. Print copies at $15 each plus postage can be ordered directly from me by emailing [email protected]. I will provide an invoice with details for payment and, upon payment, I will send you the books you order. Depending on the printer, the turnaround is usually 2-3 weeks. ebook and print copies can be ordered from various publishers via this link: Print and ebook versions can also be ordered through Amazon by clicking on the following link: THE RED HEART |
Sample Story
The Long Weekend
“The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties, and its announced end, followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it.”
- F Scott Fitzgerald
He alights from the train, pulls up his dark grey hood, and makes certain no one is interested in him before he strolls across the platform, his shadow rippling across the concrete under the fluorescent light, and descends into the underpass.
At street level, he retrieves his phone from his trouser pocket and checks the time: 11:12pm. It’s a forty-minute walk to his house, but he’s keen, the air is mild, and, if he times it right, he’ll be back to where he hid the hire car before 3am. By breakfast, he will be four hundred kilometres north.
The alley is quiet when he creeps to the dark garage beneath the moonlit units. A cat silhouette skulks along the base of a corrugated fence. He pulls on black gloves, and silently congratulates himself for unscrewing the garage handle in the afternoon before he left in the hire car. The handle detaches easily, and he lifts the Roll-a-Door slowly. He climbs into his red Golf, releases the handbrake, and he turns the ignition as the car rolls into the alley.
Skirting the city centre, a wary eye for police, he cruises through the neon orange suburban streets. There is a chance a neighbour heard his car being driven away, but he doubts it. No one heard the break-and-enter on the unit three doors down, in January, and the criminals used a sledgehammer to break into a safe buried in the garage concrete. Anyway, it’s of little consequence if someone alerts the police. This is his car, and he’ll calmly show ownership if they pull him over. And he’ll cancel the trip – which would be a bugger because he’s put so much preparation into this long weekend break, waited a long time for the right weekend to go hunting.
He laughs. Mustn’t think too much about what ifs - there’s only the plan to be executed. He’s confident he won’t be stopped, but he remains alert. That’s how he was trained in the service, and he’s never forgotten training. The humming engine soothes him, and he settles into the drive, thinking, This will be a good long weekend.
_____
Heidi Barnes slams the caravan door and storms into the evening, screaming, ‘Irresponsible bastard! Pig!’ She hears John laughing, and that inflames her anger. She kicks the side of the caravan, hurts her ankle, swears, and walks into the dull moonlight, stopping when she’s fifty paces away. A truck roars along the highway leaving wind eddies in its wake that buffet her, and she wipes aside tears as the red taillights diminish, heading south, and she wishes she could go home.
The day drive from the city was pleasant as she watched the countryside houses and farms steadily melt into wider, empty spaces at the edge of the desert. She liked the images of abandon and freedom evoked by the ochre landscape and its random ruins, and she was happy and hopeful while they were moving that this trip would prove to be a turning point in her life.
Now?
She looks back at the yellow square of caravan window and tears well again, but she fights them, squeezing her fists tight and hugging herself. ‘Why does it have to be like this?’ she whispers at the stars. ‘Why?’ John promised he’d given up the dope. He promised. But the bastard’s been toking in the toilet stops all day, and now he’s too bent to drive. She smelt it when he got back in the station wagon at the last petrol station, and she challenged him, but he laughed and said she was smelling the chewies he was munching. Now, here they are, camped in a truck stop, a hundred kilometres from nowhere, fighting and miserable.
A car whistles past, engine whining, its invisible driver racing south towards his destination, ignoring the speed limit. As the engine fades in the night, she hears John singing, so out of tune she can’t even recognise the song. She giggles. And she laughs. He’s never been much of a singer, but he sings whenever he’s drunk or wasted. ‘Shut up, you stupid bastard!’ she yells. ‘You can’t sing for shit!’ And she stares at the stars glittering against the dark universe, and the shadows of the flat countryside, broken by isolated trees, and shivers shudder through her spine. Too cold to stay out here, she decides.
As she turns to walk to the caravan, to face the man she can’t stop loving despite himself, a car slows on the highway, orange indicator flashing. It turns into the truck stop, crunching along the gravel, and stops between her and the caravan. She squints, staring at the headlights, and lifts her right arm to shield her eyes. The driver door opens.
Inside the caravan, John Barnes stops singing. He thinks he heard a sound, like a dull thump. He lowers his chilled beer can, listens, and he can hear an idling car engine. He wonders why Heidi started the car before he realises it’s not his car. Oh man, he thinks, too much dope and you can hear ants crawling through the grass. He considers checking out who else has pulled into the truck rest stop, but he flinches when he hears a knock on the caravan door. He bellows, ‘Oi! You frightened the crap out of me!’ at Heidi, who he knows is outside, and, grinning, he pushes to his feet from the crumpled green settee, and lurches to the door. ‘It’s unlocked, woman,’ he mumbles, and he belches as he swings the caravan door open. In the light is a man with a rifle.
_____
Mark Bennett plies the highway, from the capital to Wheedon, twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, freighting goods back and forth to make a living for his wife, Trudy, and their four kids. He owns his prime mover, and even though the Kenworth has a lot of kilometres on the clock he keeps it pristine and serviced with its white duco and chrome shining and clean. His father was a mechanic and he learned from his old man to be a handy mechanic himself, before Johnny Dancer took his old man two years ago. Thursday nights, he would normally be home, watching the footy on local television, reminiscing his glory days in the Under 19s, and going to bed early for the long haul Friday morning, but the long weekend has him on the road a day earlier and running later than he likes. He loves driving, always has, but nowadays he sucks down energy drinks to stay sharp because the days are longer and the distances greater. Luckily, this far out of the city, there’s not a lot of traffic on the highway so late at night, the cops are home, and he hasn’t seen a vehicle for almost fifteen minutes. He likes driving after midnight because he feels as if he is cocooned in a safe and cosy, private world.
The flickering light surprises him when he approaches the truckie bay, fifty kilometres out of Wheedon, so he slows the big Kenworth, cranking down through the gears. He thinks he’s hallucinating as he makes out the silhouettes of a car and a caravan in the inferno, but then he sees the scene for what it is, and pulls into the bay, air brakes squeaking. He grabs his fire extinguisher and jumps down from the cab, but the fire is roaring through both vehicles so intensely that the heat pushes him back.
He searches the bay for whoever belongs to the vehicles, but when it’s obvious there’s no one around he reaches into his pocket for his mobile to ring the police and local CFS. Then, in the dancing shadows on the gravel, he spies a woman spread-eagled on her back. He lopes towards her, and he kneels, saying, ‘Hey! Can you hear me?’ but he stops cold when he sees the dark hole in her forehead.
_____
Crack! The target jerks upright, rigid, and crumples. He flicks the sight four metres right, crosshairs on the next target. Crack! Soft recoil. The target kicks into the air, pitches sideways, lies motionless. A dust nebula rises. Done. Clean.
The brisk walk in the early morning raises a tiny line of sweat on his forehead. In the rear of the Toyota Landcruiser, to his delight, he finds an empty five-litre petrol tin and a short, yellow plastic hose. He sucks on the hose, cops a mouthful of petrol, and spits it into the dust. Bad timing. Must watch that, he decides. Everything by method. Important. The heat is rising, and he feels it creeping across his bare neck. Must hurry.
He strides to the Ford ute, carrying the petrol can, and pours petrol over the vehicle. The first match he flicks into the dusty brown driver’s seat doesn’t catch, so he reaches in, pulls out a blue, crumpled shirt, and rubs it along the vehicle’s side to soak up the evaporating petrol. Second match. The shirt ignites. He tosses it into the cabin and steps back. The ute roars with flames, and he smiles at his work. Time to leave.
_____
“Are you sure there’s no crocodiles in this creek?’
‘Positive. It’s too narrow and too shallow. Crocs like deeper water. And we’re too far inland. If you want to swim, swim.’
Janet eyes the green water suspiciously. How is Terry so certain about crocodiles? Too many people are taken by crocodiles up north. That’s what the media says, and she can’t think of a more horrible way to die. Teeth tearing flesh. Ugh! That poor American tourist last month. But she wants desperately to bathe in clean water. All over. Wash the ingrained red dust out of her hair and pores. Be clean again. Five days camping, walking, driving through kilometres of scrubby, rocky, dusty desert - no showers, no baths, and Terry says the drinking water is too precious to waste on bathing. She wonders why she agreed to come.
Terry slings the khaki sleeping bag into the three-man tent. He glances back to check what Janet is doing and he chuckles when he sees her toss a smooth pebble into the creek. She has no idea, he thinks. Why she agreed to come on this outback trip he doesn’t know. They’re studying Physical Education at the university in Perth, and they share the same circle of friends, but he knows that she hates the course outdoor component. Indoor sports – badminton, squash, swimming in heated pools – are her preferences, but he loves bushwalking, cross-country running, orienteering, caving. Yet, surprisingly, when he said in the tavern that he was going to spend the term holiday break wandering through the State’s north, she asked if she could come along. Actually, they were meant to be a group of four, but Vassie and Ingrid pulled out a few days before they were due to leave, citing money issues.
‘I understand if you don’t want to go now,’ he told Janet, when he dropped her off outside her unit.
‘What about you?’ she asked.
‘I’ll do what I was originally planning to do, and go alone,’ he replied. But she insisted on coming, and so he accepted her offer of companionship.
So far, though, she’s been as much fun as fleas in a jockstrap and he knows she’s hating every minute. ‘Go on,’ he urges, seeing her hesitate on the bank. ‘I swear there are no crocs in that creek.’ He turns and walks towards his battered green EH Holden ute parked in the shade of the gum trees.
_____
Willunyaburra Station squats on a vast expanse of desert country like a gleaming parasite, and red tracks wheel out from the silver-white homestead in three directions – south, towards the capital city, eight hundred kilometres away – west, towards the fertile tablelands – northeast, into the heart of the Great Desert. The surrounding land was worn barren by generations of cattle let loose by Milton Carpenter’s predecessors to graze and propagate, and now Milton’s herds are scattered across hundreds of square kilometres, searching for fragments of nourishment on the parched earth, while Milton scrabbles from expert to expert, financier to financier, bank to bank, on his obsessive mission to save his station.
Pat Carpenter rinses the last jade breakfast bowl, places it to dry on the sink rack, and gazes through the dust-smeared window at the day beyond the veranda shadow. The heat haze melts sky and earth in the middle distance into shimmering shadow and light.
This is her twelfth year on the station, two as house-help, the rest as Mrs Carpenter. She arrived, aged 32, running from a violent marriage in Mount Gambier, leaving behind sons, Peter, eleven, and Nathan, eight. Peter is almost twenty-four, but to her he will always be eleven. She’s never gone back, never made contact with the abusive bastard she left, never seen the boys. She wishes, sometimes, she made an effort to rescue them, but she knows she doesn’t have the courage to face him: Mike Rowe. Cruel. Relentless. Unforgiving. It’s better left in the past.
She eases the pink rubber gloves from her hands and looks again at the barren orange land that is a cruel metaphor for her life with Milton. This morning, he drove away in his white Toyota, leaving the dogs protesting in the shed, in the company of a mining corporation man, a man claiming interest in evaluating the land, and now Milton is somewhere out there, trying to convince the stranger that Willunyaburra Station is worth saving, is worth investing in. She sighs.
_____
Sergeant Colin Perkins opens the manila folder with sun-reddened hands and reads. “Male. Caucasian. Age possibly late twenties. No obvious items of identity on victim. Found two hundred metres off highway, twenty-six kilometres outside Meredith. Shot twice. Wounds indicate high-powered weapon. Very recent burned wreck of Commodore station wagon found two hundred metres from body. Possible second vehicle was at site of incident.” As he reads, he asks, ‘Pathology report?’
‘No, sir,’ Constable Ian Tanner replies. ‘Body is on its way to the morgue in Port Gordon after this.’
Colin looks up, lifts the sheet on the table, and stares at the pasty, blue tinged corpse, letting the information seep into his consciousness. ‘Who found the body?’
‘Vince Caruso. He was about to run the fence on his property.’
Colin drops the sheet and watches it mould loosely to the cold face beneath. He’s seen plenty of bodies. Car accidents. Work accidents. Victims of the desert’s treachery and human stupidity. Domestic murders. Tribal murders. Mutilated crocodile victims. One more body out here isn’t a big deal, but there’s something about it that piques his curiosity. ‘Okay, Ian,’ he says, handing the folder to the wiry young constable, ‘that’ll be all for now. Finish the report and get this one shipped across to Port Gordon. I’m heading out to Farwell Bore to check on the Boswell lad. Call me when there’s more news. ID. Possible motive. Car theft.’ He waves his smartphone at Tanner to emphasise his point as he heads for the door. ‘And check that email from Wheedon to see if there’s any link with the car and caravan fire that came through first thing this morning.’
_____
As soon as he hears the thucka-thucka-thucka of ruptured rubber, Andy Gibson pulls over in a swirling cloud of bulldust and thumps his fist against his steering wheel. The last thing I need is a flat tyre, and I bloody have one. Smack in the middle of nowhere. He sits inside his grey green Pajero, mind racing through a morass of emotion. Frustration. Anger. Disappointment. So much for a promise. Steve, Greg and Tim will already be at Port Gordon, unpacking gear and loading it on the trawler they hired for the four-day break. Bet they’re cursing me, he mused. Fuck.
Andy unclips his seat belt and swings out of his Pajero into the sunlight. Shielding his eyes from the glare, he peers west. The road stretches for kilometres, rising and disappearing, rising again, before melting into the haze, ghosted by watery trees and the mirage of a broad lake. The distant violet Hammond Ranges float over the vision, and beyond them, invisible, Port Gordon begs him to hurry. The trip was eight months in the planning. Now it’s dissolving like the road into the mirage.
The deal was simple. Greg knows a trawler captain because he worked for three years in the fishing industry. They have free access to the boat, so long as they agree to stay at sea for the period the captain wants to fish. Andy’s come all the way from Adelaide to catch up with his mates. So close – and now this shit.
He unpacks the spare tyre from the enclosure on the rear of the Pajero, gets his tools, and starts changing the wheel with the ruptured tyre. The heat sits fiercely on him and sweat stings his eyes and drips from the tip of his nose as he spins the wheel locknuts. Wheel off, he rises to stretch his aching legs and arms, and opens the driver’s door to retrieve his akubra.
As he lifts his hat, a glint of light catches his attention. A car approaches. He waits for it to draw closer, until he can see the green pigment of the Holden ute. It’s racing, as if chased by demons, and he sighs, thinking the driver will fly past, but his spirits rise when the ute slows dramatically. At least, he thinks contentedly, I can share my frustration in this empty desert with a fellow traveller.
_____
Even on windless days, the red dust settles comfortably in the corners of the big old homestead. When she first worked as a housekeeper, Pat hated the endless battle to keep fading teak dressers, and tables, and jarrah floorboards clean, but twelve years etched the chore into the core of her habits, so she moves methodically along an imperceptible path through the rooms and afternoon, sweeping and dusting, meditating to the music of Andre Rieu.
Milton hasn’t come home for lunch – not that she expected him to, although he didn’t take sandwiches on his foray with the stranger. She knows he has his trusty biscuit tin in the Landcruiser and plenty of water, and he always has that to fall back on.
She wraps the plates of cold beef and salad in cling wrap and returns them to the fridge, relishing the brief burst of cold air before closing the heavy door. She gazes at a photo of Milton on the fridge door. He’s grinning his big toothy grin, his face soiled with dust, and his khaki shirt stained with sweat, and she remembers the time it was taken. He broke the axle on a Willys Jeep they previously owned, eighty kilometres out in the Great Desert. The Jeep flipped, the radio was damaged, and his mobile was out of range. After four days, a helicopter stockman found him sheltering under the Jeep, trying to repair the radio. His water and biscuit supply saved him.
She looks at the mobile on the kitchen table, and at the radio perched on a small desk under the window, and she feels niggling concern. Their agreement since the Jeep incident is that, whenever he’s out and about, he rings in at meal breaks. He’s forgotten, she decides. It was her idea anyway, an idea he scoffed at when she asked. ‘I just want to make sure you don’t end up dead under a vehicle,’ she told him. So, he agreed. For her sake. He’s forgotten because he’s excited that this bloke he’s with will actually lend him money or seal a contract. It makes sense, she concludes, but she decides that, if he doesn’t call soon, she’ll ring him. Just to be safe.
She shifts their wedding photo on the mantelpiece, as she goes on with dusting, but she pauses at the kitchen door to listen to the clock ticking her life in measured rhythm.
_____
The visit to Farwell Bore goes without incident for Colin Perkins. Young Mark is settling into the conditions of his bond, and his range foreman says the lad is hardworking and honest. Colin isn’t surprised. He knows the people in his district, after twenty years of policing, and the Boswell lad is a good lad at heart; just one too many drinks, and a restless temper, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. He isn’t the first young fella to do something stupid, and he won’t be the last, Colin muses. He’ll turn out alright, eventually. But the paper chasers back in the city don’t know the lad from any other case number they file, so Colin drops in every month to check on Mark’s behaviour because the law says he has to do it.
The road rolls northeast across flat, rocky and scrubby country. Yesterday, he drove the straightest route to the Bore, but this morning he’s travelling the eastern and northern boundaries, along the highway running from the capital to Port Gordon. If he makes good time, he’ll take a detour into Willunyaburra Station to chew the fat with an old mate, Milton Carpenter. Besides, Milton owes him a beer for giving the mining rep his number.
He watches the approaching road train pulling a whirlwind of red dust in its wake, and he braces as it roars past, truckie waving briefly, the dust cloud swallowing Colin’s Range Rover. Highway it might be in name, but the jealous dust respects nothing built by men in this desert, and spreads across the tarmac wherever it can, taking back what is its own. Some days, after big winds, the road is buried, as if it never existed.
He settles into his seat as the road flattens and runs straight towards the horizon. To live and work out here, he muses, you have to love driving for hours, and he slips into memories of trips and events that form the fabric of his past.
Waking from his daydream, he realises he’s staring at the burnt-out shell of a ute beyond the verge, and he slows the Range Rover. It’s been a fortnight since his last trip along this stretch of highway, so the guttered wreck is a new landmark. He lifts his mobile hopefully, but the telco signal is non-existent. No surprise. He flicks on his radio, as he pulls to the verge, and says, ‘Tanner? You online?’ Static replies, so he waits, before saying, ‘Tanner? You there?’
‘Gotcha, Sarge,’ Ian Tanner replies. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Any reports of an accident on the Port Gordon highway? Possibly a Holden utility?’
After a pause, Ian says, ‘Nothing here, Sarge. What’s up?’
Colin stares at the wreck. Burnt-out, abandoned vehicles aren’t uncommon. Breakdowns. Stolen joyrides dumped. Cars stripped for parts and left to rust, sometimes set alight for the fun of it. ‘Check the files thoroughly, Tanner.’
‘Doing that, Sarge. Found something else.’
‘What?’
‘That car and caravan fire down Wheedon way? Woman was shot. High powered weapon, close range.’
A cold chill courses through Colin’s veins. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yep. Site doesn’t make sense. Car wasn’t attached to the caravan.’
‘They could’ve unhitched it when they stopped,’ Colin argues.
‘No, Sarge. It was a new Golf. No tow bar.’
_____
He eases the rifle stock into his shoulder, the worn wood cool and comfortable through the cotton fabric of his khaki shirt. The weight is beautifully balanced in his left hand, and he leans his cheek against metal, briefly, enjoying the chill, before settling into position. This is what he trained for. This is who he really is when he takes off the bland office mask he’s forced to wear now that he's out of service. The rifle is his soul, his power, his purpose, his fulfilment. He caresses the smooth forestock and takes sight through the scope. The target sways in the morning light, bends, and straightens, looking at the creek, poised perfectly in the gun sight. Calmly, purposefully, he eases the trigger back until he feels the recoil shudder through his body. The target, caught between breaths, jerks and topples backwards.
_____
Water streaming from her hair across her face, Janet is startled. She’s sure she heard a gunshot. She treads water, searching for Terry on the bank, spots his cream towel crumpled at the water’s edge, but she can’t see him. ‘Terry?’ she calls, anticipating an answer. The water is soothing, refreshing, easily the best experience of a trip she wishes she hadn’t come on. When he doesn’t answer, she yells, ‘Terry? Did you hear that?’ The silence disturbs her. ‘Terry?’ Annoyed, uncertain, she kicks and swims towards the bank, and when her feet touch the sandy bottom she wades forward, calling, ‘Terry?’ The touch of air on her wet skin makes her feel cruelly exposed in her nakedness, and she whimpers, ‘You’re not being funny!’
As she steps onto the bank, a shadow stretches across the sand. She glances up the slope, shielding her eyes from the bright sun, and sees a slim figure in khaki clothes. And a rifle. The stranger is smiling.
_____
Colin is used to sifting through the hulks of charred vehicles and he takes deliberate care, like an archaeologist, but the ute’s carbonised, melted interior isn’t yielding much evidence. Nevertheless, he spots anomalies that are familiar clues. The keys are melted into the ignition, so the vehicle was dumped. There are piles of ash in the back seat, and in the rear tray, that don’t appear to be parts of the vehicle. Luggage? Stolen vehicle then.
Around the wreck, he finds more pieces to the puzzle. Tyre tracks coming in and pulling away. Another vehicle. Could be just someone curious when they found it by the road. Could be the person, or people, who set it alight. Two sets of boot prints are visible in the dust. So, two people. He finds rumpled, discoloured earth – only one set of prints. And then he sees the drag marks and imagines a picture he doesn’t want to find.
Fifty metres away, among the stunted, twisted trees and underbrush, he finds the makeshift shallow grave. He doesn’t need to dig. A wild dog has recently rooted out and gnawed a hand and arm.
_____
Gunindee Downs is one of six stations owned by the Merritt Corporation, and Derek Foulds, who flies choppers on boundary checks and cattle musters for the Corporation, routinely passes over the station.
Originally owned by the MacPherson family, in its heyday the station employed twenty-three aboriginal and white stockmen and was home to their wives and children, but the persistent desert and successive government policies inevitably broke the defiance of the last MacPherson, so that, when Merritt lawyers came with their promises and money, Eric MacPherson seized his chance and sold his inheritance to wipe his debt. The stockmen were sacked and replaced by a single manager and a couple of lads. The workmen’s quarters fell into disrepair, the once beautiful oasis of gardens dissolved into the sand, and the sheds rotted. Only the old homestead survived, hunkered under its wide verandas, to serve as eating and sleeping rooms for the Corporation’s employees. It’s commonly known that ghosts of the former MacPherson family drift through the decaying structure, on moonlit, windless nights, and sigh at the ruin.
A black funnel of smoke catches Derek’s attention, while he hovers over the Thirty Mile Bore, assessing the number and condition of the cattle clustered there. The black line, spiralling sharply skyward, spreads at its peak like a stain against the blue sky, and appears to be rising from a point beyond the property’s boundary, near Turner’s Creek. He’s surprised he didn’t notice it when he flew in. He tilts the joystick and banks towards the creek.
As he homes in on the source, he sees the remnants of a dust trail swirling in the distance, arrowing from the creek towards the highway, and glimpses a flash of metallic light at the head of the dust. It crosses his mind that whoever is scurrying away started the fire and he considers giving chase, but his fuel is limited, and he knows he should already be heading back to base, and definitely not chasing dust clouds. He manoeuvres to hover above the creek, close to the burning object, and recognises the outline of a four-wheel drive in the inferno. Why the hell would someone dump and burn a vehicle this far out? he wonders, as he descends to land.
_____
Colin Perkins looks at the sticky note on his laptop. ‘When did she call in?’
‘Mid-morning, Sarge, while you were checking the wreck on the Port Gordon highway,’ says Constable Tanner.
‘How long did she say he’d been missing?’
‘Since yesterday morning. Twenty-five hours. Him and a bloke named Geoff Edgely.’
‘Who’s Edgely?’
‘Works for Tableland Mining. I rang them. You spoke to him and gave him Carpenter’s contact. He was going out to make an offer. They expected him back last night.’
Colin slams his fist against his thigh, lifts his akubra with his other hand, and scratches his head briefly. If he dropped in to the Carpenters after checking the wreck – but he didn’t. ‘I don’t need Milt to go missing now, not with a crazed idiot running around out there.’
‘Sorry, Sarge, there’s more.’
‘What?’
‘Chopper pilot from the Merritt Corp radioed in twenty minutes ago and reported he’s found two more bodies, and another burned-out vehicle. I’ve got Rick heading out there.’
‘Where?’
‘Turner’s Creek. Out near the Gunindee Downs homestead.’
‘Christ!’ Colin swears in exasperation. ‘What the hell is happening?’
‘And that Wheedon thing?’ Ian says. ‘They found some poor bloke in the caravan, what was left of him. They don’t know for sure, but they figure he was shot too.’
‘That makes -’ Colin pauses on the math. ‘Six.’ He leans against the windowsill, stares out at the bright blue sky, and swears under his breath. Not you, Milt. Jesus Christ, not you too. He turns to Ian, and says, ‘Ring Todd Williamson over at Port Gordon and tell him we have six probable murders on our plate.’ He hesitates. ‘Possibly eight.’ He swallows and continues. ‘Tell him we need a quality forensics team out here now. Then take Jensen and Wright to the Carpenter place. Search the country thoroughly, especially towards the Great Desert. There’s a chance you’ll find - a chance you’ll find a burned-out vehicle.’ He locks eyes with Ian. ‘If you do, I want to know straight away. Okay?’
‘You’ll know,’ Ian assures him. ‘Want me to ring Mrs Carpenter?’
‘I’ll ring Pat - Mrs Carpenter,’ Colin replies. ‘Be thorough with whatever you find. We need every detail. And see if Jimmy Douglas can help with some tracking. He knows the country out there.’ He turns to look out the window again.
Ian puts his hand on Colin’s shoulder. ‘You should take a break after you’ve spoken to Mrs Carpenter, Sarge. We’ll keep you up to date when we’re out there.’
Colin nods. ‘Thanks, mate. I will.’
_____
Pat Carpenter’s voice quivers at the other end of the radio and Colin wants to reach through the crackling airwaves to comfort his friend, to reassure her that Milton is fine, and he’ll turn up like last time, but there’s too much distance, and he knows intuitively it would be a lie.
_____
When she signs off, Pat sits in her armchair for a long time, staring into the brittle mid-morning light at the shimmering line of the horizon, waiting for the police to arrive.
_____
The news Colin expects comes as evening settles over the desert. Ian rings, his voice solemn. Burned-out Ford ute. Two victims shot with a high-powered weapon. Colin thanks him and hangs up.
He walks outside and stands on the porch of the Meredith Police Station in the cool evening air and a tiny breeze chisels at the cracks in his face and neck. Away in the west, the faintest trace of dying sunset paints an amber brush stroke beneath the wash of purpling sky. Windows along the street spill yellow light onto the gravel and bitumen. He watches the headlights and taillights of the first mining ute circle and stop outside the Meredith Pub to disgorge a load of miners. Raucous voices rupture the calm evening. A car and caravan roll by, heading north, and Colin habitually memorises the number plate. Queensland number. Tourists: probably middle-aged refugees, running from teenage adults and double mortgages to lose themselves in the beauty and expanse of the great outback. The news hasn’t broken anywhere, yet, of the drama unfolding on the edge of the desert.
He ponders why this wild country and its hostile environment holds such intense attraction to city people and overseas visitors. Red dust. Heat. Isolation. Lack of water. Flies. Yet they come in droves, especially young men, seeking their fortunes like the mining prospectors did in the Nineteenth Century. Most young men are here for the mining money, and lots of it, but they piss it down the urinals, and gamble and fuck it away every weekend in the pubs and brothels. He’s seen young men arrive to find work at the few surviving stations, searching for the romanticised images of stockmen, littered through adverts, films and books, and finding only hundreds of kilometres of harsh, lonely distance and dust. A handful of lucky ones stick it out, but mostly he sees the gaunt ghosts of the former boys skulk onto buses and trains, heading south to the city they spurned, a little older, not a lot wiser, but cured of their romanticism, innocence dried out by the unrelenting desert. ‘Need to be less of a cynic,’ he mutters, as three four-wheel drives deliver another mining crew to the pub. Rock music spills out of the pub door when it opens to suck in the workers.
He didn’t tell Pat Carpenter about the murders, or what he feared for Milt and the mining chap, this morning. Now he has to tell her the worst news possible, and it sickens him. He’s known the Carpenters for fifteen years, dropped in on his regular trips, had a few beers too many with Milt, and laughed and ruminated and argued. Now Milt is a statistic, like the young couple at Turner’s Creek, the man buried beside the Port Gordon highway, and the couple in the truck rest bay. He feels a tear welling behind his eyes and thumps his fist against his thigh to break the emotion.
He glimpses a faint lightning flash to the northwest, and turns to gaze in that direction, expecting a second flash, vaguely remembering a recent television weather report about a cyclone gathering momentum in the Indian Ocean. There’s already a terrible storm gathering here, he muses laconically. When the news races across the web and phones and breaks like thunder on the television and in the papers down south, it will expose the sickening truth at the heart of the desert, and the whole nation will turn its eyes on Meredith. He’s seen it before – stories of mad men going berserk with guns, the worst being that mongrel in Tasmania last century. It turns spotlights on communities, ruins them, while city people speculate who’s killing who and why. The government toughened its gun laws after that Tasmanian tragedy, but if a man wants a gun it’s not so hard to get one. Plenty of blokes didn’t hand in their unregistered weapons back then, just buried them. And he wonders from where the killer out there in the desert got his illegal, high-powered rifle? Those guns are very hard to come by. Another lightning flash distracts him, too far away for thunder. The storm is gathering.
A Pajero drifts along the main street, grey-green hue momentarily lit by the streetlight outside the police station. Colin checks the number plate - South Australian - another traveller thinking he’s safely cocooned in the desert, free of the city cares he left behind. If only you knew the truth, mate, he thinks.
And he knows that, when the news breaks tomorrow, or the next day, people all over the country, in towns and on farms, will rush to lock their windows and doors, and ring their families to check on them, because the beast is loose again in the desert, and hungry for blood. He’s hunted the beast before, across plains and dunes, tracked it to its lair, and helped others lock it away so it can’t kill any more, but this time it’s stalking the desert with ruthless cunning and a high-powered rifle, leaving a trail of burning wrecks. And he smells fear oozing from the earth.
‘I need a drink,’ he mutters. He descends the steps of the police station veranda and crosses the road, heading for the pub.
_____
Pat knows why Colin Perkins stands in her doorway. She’s waited all morning for him to arrive. She reads the tired lines in his ruddy face, but she hardly hears the words from his lips. She knows what he’s come to say, long before he says it, and she pities him. ‘Come in, Colin,’ she says quietly.
He takes off his hat, and bows his head respectfully, as he steps into the house.
She turns away to summon her courage, and her hands start shaking, so she clasps them, to bring them under control, before she turns to Colin, and says, ‘Sit down. Cup of tea?’ Her voice sounds treacherously brittle.
Colin shakes his head, avoiding her gaze, and a terrible silence hangs between them.
She breaks it with, ‘You’ve found him then?’
The simple question drags Colin’s eyes up, and he sees, beyond her weary, expectant expression, the well of strength within, and why Milton Carpenter loved this woman. ‘I’m sorry, Pat,’ he says.
She wants to reply, ‘That’s okay, Colin. It isn’t your fault. I understand,’ but sorrow betrays her, and all that escapes from her lips is a choking sob. Shocked at her failure, her face melts into a torrent of tears.
Colin cradles her to his chest and lets her cry out her grief inside the big old homestead that Milton Carpenter battled to keep for her.
_____
On the return drive from Willunyaburra Station, Colin pulls over on the highway verge and climbs out of his Range Rover to take a piss. He stares at the dark clouds piling up in the northwest and figures the cyclone is heading straight for Port Gordon. The most recent weather report, in the morning, before he headed out to see Pat, said the cyclone would cross the coast in the evening and possibly roll into the Great Desert. He sees lightning flash in the cloud and knows it’s a big storm coming. He’s seen plenty over the years, and he knows when they’re bringing trouble. And this one’s timing couldn’t be worse.
The other storm is breaking across the Australian media in the capital cities today. Killer loose in the desert. Six dead. Police baffled. He knows the journalist jackals are eager to follow the path of the rabid killer wolf; expects to see chartered news planes and choppers appearing over Meredith, and the murder sites. They’re probably already arriving in the town, waiting for him with their cameras and recording phones, hungry for every juicy titbit that they can scavenge. Media frenzy. He hates journalists more than he hates killers because they get in his way with their inane questions and arrogant belief that they have the right to tell everyone everything they can.
He zips his fly and climbs into his vehicle. The clues are mounting: bodies; tyre tracks; foot prints; none of the victims connected, except by circumstance; everything meticulously planned to eliminate evidence; no cartridge shells at the scenes; wounds indicate a high-powered rifle, almost certainly illegal and unregistered; vehicles burned to eradicate fingerprints and DNA; vehicles stolen from each murder site, and used to get to the next; the shooter an expert marksman, except some victims executed at point-blank range. The latest victim had a Pajero.
And he remembers the grey green Pajero in Meredith, last night, and feels a sharp twinge in his throat. And he hears the first rumble of thunder from the approaching cyclone as he reaches for the radio.
_____
Lucas Driscoll has a wife and two kids in the city. He keeps their pictures displayed on his cluttered desk in his car yard office, and he shows them to everyone he doesn’t know. ‘No, mate, not divorced,’ he tells those who ask. ‘Separated.’ His wife walked out on him when his car hire business went broke, and she took the kids with her to the other side of the city. He refused to accept her request for a divorce. Instead, he sold the house to repay his debts, gave what was left to his wife, gathered his few possessions, and answered an advertisement for a car yard manager/salesman in Port Gordon. He would show his wife he could make enough cash to go back to the city and reclaim his family. That was three years ago. He hasn’t been back, and his business isn’t flourishing. He gets by on sales of second-hand vehicles to the locals, and a once-in-a-blue-moon sale of a new four-wheel drive to stranded tourists, or mining agents flush with money. He hungers for a fleet commission with a mining company, but he knows that will be a miracle.
There are plenty of places in Port Gordon for men to amuse themselves - pubs, football clubs, brothels - but Lucas likes a little club eighty kilometres away, in Meredith. The girls working at the ‘Heat and Sweat’ make him feel special, treat him like a lover, especially the redhead, Jenna, so he dresses in leather, hops on his Suzuki, and rides to the club on weekends to spend time and cash in languid arms. He comes back to his two-bedroom unit, satisfied and a little drunk, knowing his wife will never be a Jenna and he will never see her again.
It’s late, and he’s riding home, following the white line, exhausted from the evening’s pleasure, hazy from four beers, but he’s wary this time of night. Kangaroos and wild dogs can instantly appear, and they can kill a man on a motorcycle. He had one narrow escape, five months back: big red boomer hopped onto the road and stared him down, and he went bush, flipping over the handlebars when the front wheel dug into the red sand, smashing his left elbow against the hard earth. The bike was okay - few scratches and dents - but his elbow took six weeks to mend.
Distant headlights blind him. They bear down and roar past in the form of a lorry on its way to Meredith. Otherwise, the highway is dark and empty. Lightning flashes along the horizon, and he remembers there’s a cyclone heading in, and grins at his timing. Back in bed before it hits, he thinks, and he winds out the throttle, daring a roo to jump out tonight.
So the appearance of a man on the edge of the road, waving for attention as he races past, startles him, and he slows quickly, brake light flaring, turning the highway red in his wake. He makes a U-turn, wondering what’s happened to the poor bastard, and sees the figure take form in his headlight. He spots the shadowy silhouette of a four-wheel drive off the road, in the saltbush. Accident maybe? Probably a miner had too much to drink and lost control, and he grins because the highway here is dead straight. As he stops beside the stranger, he flips up his visor and asks, ‘Need some help, mate?’
_____
Colin waits at the station for a call or email. If his hunch is right, the next vehicle they need is a Pajero with South Australian plates. Highway patrols are alerted. A chopper from the mine is on its way, commandeered to fly the highway. Out here, it can’t be too hard to track one four-wheel drive. The only catch will be if the shooter’s already moved on to his next victim’s vehicle.
And the call comes from a patrol. ‘Sergeant Perkins?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Constable Eckert, Port Gordon, Sergeant. We’ve found your Pajero.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Fifteen clicks out of Port Gordon. About a click off the highway.’
‘Burned out?’
‘Yep.’
‘Body?’
‘Not at the site, Sarge. Just the vehicle. Footprints head back to the highway, so whoever set it alight went back to the road afterwards.’
‘Start checking around for anyone missing. Check if any truckies or anyone’s picked up a hitchhiker. And be quick. If there’s no body there, this bastard could be holding someone hostage. I’m heading over your way.’
_____
He pauses on the verge, indicator ticking, looking both ways. No vehicle visible in either direction. The column of black smoke, four kilometres up the highway, is arching to the south-east, bending with the rising wind beneath the ceiling of rain grey clouds, and he’s glad he’s off the motorbike and in the car before the rain sets in. Thunder rumbles all around. Lightning flashes. Rain spots spatter across the windscreen as he pulls onto the highway and accelerates.
It feels good to be driving a familiar vehicle, even a hired one. The Golf was a favourite, bought brand new, but for the alibi to work it was an important sacrifice. When he gets home from his weekend away, he’ll report his car stolen and open the insurance claim, while the police pull the pieces of the puzzle together and conclude he’s a lucky bastard in what will unfold as a chain of tragic murders across the north.
After years cooped in concrete and glass, wrestling burgeoning policies and pedantic procedures, it’s been a long, arduous, exhausting four-day weekend, but it’s been good hunting and everything he was seeking. Challenging, frantic, fulfilling to the core, the thrill of the hunt seethes through his veins, and, despite the break between, he’s pleased the military skills he honed in another place and time are still keen. It’s been a very good holiday.
He eases into the car seat, winds down his window, and enjoys the tang of the cool ocean air as he speeds away from the rising storm, heading south, heading home.
“The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties, and its announced end, followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it.”
- F Scott Fitzgerald
He alights from the train, pulls up his dark grey hood, and makes certain no one is interested in him before he strolls across the platform, his shadow rippling across the concrete under the fluorescent light, and descends into the underpass.
At street level, he retrieves his phone from his trouser pocket and checks the time: 11:12pm. It’s a forty-minute walk to his house, but he’s keen, the air is mild, and, if he times it right, he’ll be back to where he hid the hire car before 3am. By breakfast, he will be four hundred kilometres north.
The alley is quiet when he creeps to the dark garage beneath the moonlit units. A cat silhouette skulks along the base of a corrugated fence. He pulls on black gloves, and silently congratulates himself for unscrewing the garage handle in the afternoon before he left in the hire car. The handle detaches easily, and he lifts the Roll-a-Door slowly. He climbs into his red Golf, releases the handbrake, and he turns the ignition as the car rolls into the alley.
Skirting the city centre, a wary eye for police, he cruises through the neon orange suburban streets. There is a chance a neighbour heard his car being driven away, but he doubts it. No one heard the break-and-enter on the unit three doors down, in January, and the criminals used a sledgehammer to break into a safe buried in the garage concrete. Anyway, it’s of little consequence if someone alerts the police. This is his car, and he’ll calmly show ownership if they pull him over. And he’ll cancel the trip – which would be a bugger because he’s put so much preparation into this long weekend break, waited a long time for the right weekend to go hunting.
He laughs. Mustn’t think too much about what ifs - there’s only the plan to be executed. He’s confident he won’t be stopped, but he remains alert. That’s how he was trained in the service, and he’s never forgotten training. The humming engine soothes him, and he settles into the drive, thinking, This will be a good long weekend.
_____
Heidi Barnes slams the caravan door and storms into the evening, screaming, ‘Irresponsible bastard! Pig!’ She hears John laughing, and that inflames her anger. She kicks the side of the caravan, hurts her ankle, swears, and walks into the dull moonlight, stopping when she’s fifty paces away. A truck roars along the highway leaving wind eddies in its wake that buffet her, and she wipes aside tears as the red taillights diminish, heading south, and she wishes she could go home.
The day drive from the city was pleasant as she watched the countryside houses and farms steadily melt into wider, empty spaces at the edge of the desert. She liked the images of abandon and freedom evoked by the ochre landscape and its random ruins, and she was happy and hopeful while they were moving that this trip would prove to be a turning point in her life.
Now?
She looks back at the yellow square of caravan window and tears well again, but she fights them, squeezing her fists tight and hugging herself. ‘Why does it have to be like this?’ she whispers at the stars. ‘Why?’ John promised he’d given up the dope. He promised. But the bastard’s been toking in the toilet stops all day, and now he’s too bent to drive. She smelt it when he got back in the station wagon at the last petrol station, and she challenged him, but he laughed and said she was smelling the chewies he was munching. Now, here they are, camped in a truck stop, a hundred kilometres from nowhere, fighting and miserable.
A car whistles past, engine whining, its invisible driver racing south towards his destination, ignoring the speed limit. As the engine fades in the night, she hears John singing, so out of tune she can’t even recognise the song. She giggles. And she laughs. He’s never been much of a singer, but he sings whenever he’s drunk or wasted. ‘Shut up, you stupid bastard!’ she yells. ‘You can’t sing for shit!’ And she stares at the stars glittering against the dark universe, and the shadows of the flat countryside, broken by isolated trees, and shivers shudder through her spine. Too cold to stay out here, she decides.
As she turns to walk to the caravan, to face the man she can’t stop loving despite himself, a car slows on the highway, orange indicator flashing. It turns into the truck stop, crunching along the gravel, and stops between her and the caravan. She squints, staring at the headlights, and lifts her right arm to shield her eyes. The driver door opens.
Inside the caravan, John Barnes stops singing. He thinks he heard a sound, like a dull thump. He lowers his chilled beer can, listens, and he can hear an idling car engine. He wonders why Heidi started the car before he realises it’s not his car. Oh man, he thinks, too much dope and you can hear ants crawling through the grass. He considers checking out who else has pulled into the truck rest stop, but he flinches when he hears a knock on the caravan door. He bellows, ‘Oi! You frightened the crap out of me!’ at Heidi, who he knows is outside, and, grinning, he pushes to his feet from the crumpled green settee, and lurches to the door. ‘It’s unlocked, woman,’ he mumbles, and he belches as he swings the caravan door open. In the light is a man with a rifle.
_____
Mark Bennett plies the highway, from the capital to Wheedon, twice a week, Mondays and Fridays, freighting goods back and forth to make a living for his wife, Trudy, and their four kids. He owns his prime mover, and even though the Kenworth has a lot of kilometres on the clock he keeps it pristine and serviced with its white duco and chrome shining and clean. His father was a mechanic and he learned from his old man to be a handy mechanic himself, before Johnny Dancer took his old man two years ago. Thursday nights, he would normally be home, watching the footy on local television, reminiscing his glory days in the Under 19s, and going to bed early for the long haul Friday morning, but the long weekend has him on the road a day earlier and running later than he likes. He loves driving, always has, but nowadays he sucks down energy drinks to stay sharp because the days are longer and the distances greater. Luckily, this far out of the city, there’s not a lot of traffic on the highway so late at night, the cops are home, and he hasn’t seen a vehicle for almost fifteen minutes. He likes driving after midnight because he feels as if he is cocooned in a safe and cosy, private world.
The flickering light surprises him when he approaches the truckie bay, fifty kilometres out of Wheedon, so he slows the big Kenworth, cranking down through the gears. He thinks he’s hallucinating as he makes out the silhouettes of a car and a caravan in the inferno, but then he sees the scene for what it is, and pulls into the bay, air brakes squeaking. He grabs his fire extinguisher and jumps down from the cab, but the fire is roaring through both vehicles so intensely that the heat pushes him back.
He searches the bay for whoever belongs to the vehicles, but when it’s obvious there’s no one around he reaches into his pocket for his mobile to ring the police and local CFS. Then, in the dancing shadows on the gravel, he spies a woman spread-eagled on her back. He lopes towards her, and he kneels, saying, ‘Hey! Can you hear me?’ but he stops cold when he sees the dark hole in her forehead.
_____
Crack! The target jerks upright, rigid, and crumples. He flicks the sight four metres right, crosshairs on the next target. Crack! Soft recoil. The target kicks into the air, pitches sideways, lies motionless. A dust nebula rises. Done. Clean.
The brisk walk in the early morning raises a tiny line of sweat on his forehead. In the rear of the Toyota Landcruiser, to his delight, he finds an empty five-litre petrol tin and a short, yellow plastic hose. He sucks on the hose, cops a mouthful of petrol, and spits it into the dust. Bad timing. Must watch that, he decides. Everything by method. Important. The heat is rising, and he feels it creeping across his bare neck. Must hurry.
He strides to the Ford ute, carrying the petrol can, and pours petrol over the vehicle. The first match he flicks into the dusty brown driver’s seat doesn’t catch, so he reaches in, pulls out a blue, crumpled shirt, and rubs it along the vehicle’s side to soak up the evaporating petrol. Second match. The shirt ignites. He tosses it into the cabin and steps back. The ute roars with flames, and he smiles at his work. Time to leave.
_____
“Are you sure there’s no crocodiles in this creek?’
‘Positive. It’s too narrow and too shallow. Crocs like deeper water. And we’re too far inland. If you want to swim, swim.’
Janet eyes the green water suspiciously. How is Terry so certain about crocodiles? Too many people are taken by crocodiles up north. That’s what the media says, and she can’t think of a more horrible way to die. Teeth tearing flesh. Ugh! That poor American tourist last month. But she wants desperately to bathe in clean water. All over. Wash the ingrained red dust out of her hair and pores. Be clean again. Five days camping, walking, driving through kilometres of scrubby, rocky, dusty desert - no showers, no baths, and Terry says the drinking water is too precious to waste on bathing. She wonders why she agreed to come.
Terry slings the khaki sleeping bag into the three-man tent. He glances back to check what Janet is doing and he chuckles when he sees her toss a smooth pebble into the creek. She has no idea, he thinks. Why she agreed to come on this outback trip he doesn’t know. They’re studying Physical Education at the university in Perth, and they share the same circle of friends, but he knows that she hates the course outdoor component. Indoor sports – badminton, squash, swimming in heated pools – are her preferences, but he loves bushwalking, cross-country running, orienteering, caving. Yet, surprisingly, when he said in the tavern that he was going to spend the term holiday break wandering through the State’s north, she asked if she could come along. Actually, they were meant to be a group of four, but Vassie and Ingrid pulled out a few days before they were due to leave, citing money issues.
‘I understand if you don’t want to go now,’ he told Janet, when he dropped her off outside her unit.
‘What about you?’ she asked.
‘I’ll do what I was originally planning to do, and go alone,’ he replied. But she insisted on coming, and so he accepted her offer of companionship.
So far, though, she’s been as much fun as fleas in a jockstrap and he knows she’s hating every minute. ‘Go on,’ he urges, seeing her hesitate on the bank. ‘I swear there are no crocs in that creek.’ He turns and walks towards his battered green EH Holden ute parked in the shade of the gum trees.
_____
Willunyaburra Station squats on a vast expanse of desert country like a gleaming parasite, and red tracks wheel out from the silver-white homestead in three directions – south, towards the capital city, eight hundred kilometres away – west, towards the fertile tablelands – northeast, into the heart of the Great Desert. The surrounding land was worn barren by generations of cattle let loose by Milton Carpenter’s predecessors to graze and propagate, and now Milton’s herds are scattered across hundreds of square kilometres, searching for fragments of nourishment on the parched earth, while Milton scrabbles from expert to expert, financier to financier, bank to bank, on his obsessive mission to save his station.
Pat Carpenter rinses the last jade breakfast bowl, places it to dry on the sink rack, and gazes through the dust-smeared window at the day beyond the veranda shadow. The heat haze melts sky and earth in the middle distance into shimmering shadow and light.
This is her twelfth year on the station, two as house-help, the rest as Mrs Carpenter. She arrived, aged 32, running from a violent marriage in Mount Gambier, leaving behind sons, Peter, eleven, and Nathan, eight. Peter is almost twenty-four, but to her he will always be eleven. She’s never gone back, never made contact with the abusive bastard she left, never seen the boys. She wishes, sometimes, she made an effort to rescue them, but she knows she doesn’t have the courage to face him: Mike Rowe. Cruel. Relentless. Unforgiving. It’s better left in the past.
She eases the pink rubber gloves from her hands and looks again at the barren orange land that is a cruel metaphor for her life with Milton. This morning, he drove away in his white Toyota, leaving the dogs protesting in the shed, in the company of a mining corporation man, a man claiming interest in evaluating the land, and now Milton is somewhere out there, trying to convince the stranger that Willunyaburra Station is worth saving, is worth investing in. She sighs.
_____
Sergeant Colin Perkins opens the manila folder with sun-reddened hands and reads. “Male. Caucasian. Age possibly late twenties. No obvious items of identity on victim. Found two hundred metres off highway, twenty-six kilometres outside Meredith. Shot twice. Wounds indicate high-powered weapon. Very recent burned wreck of Commodore station wagon found two hundred metres from body. Possible second vehicle was at site of incident.” As he reads, he asks, ‘Pathology report?’
‘No, sir,’ Constable Ian Tanner replies. ‘Body is on its way to the morgue in Port Gordon after this.’
Colin looks up, lifts the sheet on the table, and stares at the pasty, blue tinged corpse, letting the information seep into his consciousness. ‘Who found the body?’
‘Vince Caruso. He was about to run the fence on his property.’
Colin drops the sheet and watches it mould loosely to the cold face beneath. He’s seen plenty of bodies. Car accidents. Work accidents. Victims of the desert’s treachery and human stupidity. Domestic murders. Tribal murders. Mutilated crocodile victims. One more body out here isn’t a big deal, but there’s something about it that piques his curiosity. ‘Okay, Ian,’ he says, handing the folder to the wiry young constable, ‘that’ll be all for now. Finish the report and get this one shipped across to Port Gordon. I’m heading out to Farwell Bore to check on the Boswell lad. Call me when there’s more news. ID. Possible motive. Car theft.’ He waves his smartphone at Tanner to emphasise his point as he heads for the door. ‘And check that email from Wheedon to see if there’s any link with the car and caravan fire that came through first thing this morning.’
_____
As soon as he hears the thucka-thucka-thucka of ruptured rubber, Andy Gibson pulls over in a swirling cloud of bulldust and thumps his fist against his steering wheel. The last thing I need is a flat tyre, and I bloody have one. Smack in the middle of nowhere. He sits inside his grey green Pajero, mind racing through a morass of emotion. Frustration. Anger. Disappointment. So much for a promise. Steve, Greg and Tim will already be at Port Gordon, unpacking gear and loading it on the trawler they hired for the four-day break. Bet they’re cursing me, he mused. Fuck.
Andy unclips his seat belt and swings out of his Pajero into the sunlight. Shielding his eyes from the glare, he peers west. The road stretches for kilometres, rising and disappearing, rising again, before melting into the haze, ghosted by watery trees and the mirage of a broad lake. The distant violet Hammond Ranges float over the vision, and beyond them, invisible, Port Gordon begs him to hurry. The trip was eight months in the planning. Now it’s dissolving like the road into the mirage.
The deal was simple. Greg knows a trawler captain because he worked for three years in the fishing industry. They have free access to the boat, so long as they agree to stay at sea for the period the captain wants to fish. Andy’s come all the way from Adelaide to catch up with his mates. So close – and now this shit.
He unpacks the spare tyre from the enclosure on the rear of the Pajero, gets his tools, and starts changing the wheel with the ruptured tyre. The heat sits fiercely on him and sweat stings his eyes and drips from the tip of his nose as he spins the wheel locknuts. Wheel off, he rises to stretch his aching legs and arms, and opens the driver’s door to retrieve his akubra.
As he lifts his hat, a glint of light catches his attention. A car approaches. He waits for it to draw closer, until he can see the green pigment of the Holden ute. It’s racing, as if chased by demons, and he sighs, thinking the driver will fly past, but his spirits rise when the ute slows dramatically. At least, he thinks contentedly, I can share my frustration in this empty desert with a fellow traveller.
_____
Even on windless days, the red dust settles comfortably in the corners of the big old homestead. When she first worked as a housekeeper, Pat hated the endless battle to keep fading teak dressers, and tables, and jarrah floorboards clean, but twelve years etched the chore into the core of her habits, so she moves methodically along an imperceptible path through the rooms and afternoon, sweeping and dusting, meditating to the music of Andre Rieu.
Milton hasn’t come home for lunch – not that she expected him to, although he didn’t take sandwiches on his foray with the stranger. She knows he has his trusty biscuit tin in the Landcruiser and plenty of water, and he always has that to fall back on.
She wraps the plates of cold beef and salad in cling wrap and returns them to the fridge, relishing the brief burst of cold air before closing the heavy door. She gazes at a photo of Milton on the fridge door. He’s grinning his big toothy grin, his face soiled with dust, and his khaki shirt stained with sweat, and she remembers the time it was taken. He broke the axle on a Willys Jeep they previously owned, eighty kilometres out in the Great Desert. The Jeep flipped, the radio was damaged, and his mobile was out of range. After four days, a helicopter stockman found him sheltering under the Jeep, trying to repair the radio. His water and biscuit supply saved him.
She looks at the mobile on the kitchen table, and at the radio perched on a small desk under the window, and she feels niggling concern. Their agreement since the Jeep incident is that, whenever he’s out and about, he rings in at meal breaks. He’s forgotten, she decides. It was her idea anyway, an idea he scoffed at when she asked. ‘I just want to make sure you don’t end up dead under a vehicle,’ she told him. So, he agreed. For her sake. He’s forgotten because he’s excited that this bloke he’s with will actually lend him money or seal a contract. It makes sense, she concludes, but she decides that, if he doesn’t call soon, she’ll ring him. Just to be safe.
She shifts their wedding photo on the mantelpiece, as she goes on with dusting, but she pauses at the kitchen door to listen to the clock ticking her life in measured rhythm.
_____
The visit to Farwell Bore goes without incident for Colin Perkins. Young Mark is settling into the conditions of his bond, and his range foreman says the lad is hardworking and honest. Colin isn’t surprised. He knows the people in his district, after twenty years of policing, and the Boswell lad is a good lad at heart; just one too many drinks, and a restless temper, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. He isn’t the first young fella to do something stupid, and he won’t be the last, Colin muses. He’ll turn out alright, eventually. But the paper chasers back in the city don’t know the lad from any other case number they file, so Colin drops in every month to check on Mark’s behaviour because the law says he has to do it.
The road rolls northeast across flat, rocky and scrubby country. Yesterday, he drove the straightest route to the Bore, but this morning he’s travelling the eastern and northern boundaries, along the highway running from the capital to Port Gordon. If he makes good time, he’ll take a detour into Willunyaburra Station to chew the fat with an old mate, Milton Carpenter. Besides, Milton owes him a beer for giving the mining rep his number.
He watches the approaching road train pulling a whirlwind of red dust in its wake, and he braces as it roars past, truckie waving briefly, the dust cloud swallowing Colin’s Range Rover. Highway it might be in name, but the jealous dust respects nothing built by men in this desert, and spreads across the tarmac wherever it can, taking back what is its own. Some days, after big winds, the road is buried, as if it never existed.
He settles into his seat as the road flattens and runs straight towards the horizon. To live and work out here, he muses, you have to love driving for hours, and he slips into memories of trips and events that form the fabric of his past.
Waking from his daydream, he realises he’s staring at the burnt-out shell of a ute beyond the verge, and he slows the Range Rover. It’s been a fortnight since his last trip along this stretch of highway, so the guttered wreck is a new landmark. He lifts his mobile hopefully, but the telco signal is non-existent. No surprise. He flicks on his radio, as he pulls to the verge, and says, ‘Tanner? You online?’ Static replies, so he waits, before saying, ‘Tanner? You there?’
‘Gotcha, Sarge,’ Ian Tanner replies. ‘Go ahead.’
‘Any reports of an accident on the Port Gordon highway? Possibly a Holden utility?’
After a pause, Ian says, ‘Nothing here, Sarge. What’s up?’
Colin stares at the wreck. Burnt-out, abandoned vehicles aren’t uncommon. Breakdowns. Stolen joyrides dumped. Cars stripped for parts and left to rust, sometimes set alight for the fun of it. ‘Check the files thoroughly, Tanner.’
‘Doing that, Sarge. Found something else.’
‘What?’
‘That car and caravan fire down Wheedon way? Woman was shot. High powered weapon, close range.’
A cold chill courses through Colin’s veins. ‘Anything else?’
‘Yep. Site doesn’t make sense. Car wasn’t attached to the caravan.’
‘They could’ve unhitched it when they stopped,’ Colin argues.
‘No, Sarge. It was a new Golf. No tow bar.’
_____
He eases the rifle stock into his shoulder, the worn wood cool and comfortable through the cotton fabric of his khaki shirt. The weight is beautifully balanced in his left hand, and he leans his cheek against metal, briefly, enjoying the chill, before settling into position. This is what he trained for. This is who he really is when he takes off the bland office mask he’s forced to wear now that he's out of service. The rifle is his soul, his power, his purpose, his fulfilment. He caresses the smooth forestock and takes sight through the scope. The target sways in the morning light, bends, and straightens, looking at the creek, poised perfectly in the gun sight. Calmly, purposefully, he eases the trigger back until he feels the recoil shudder through his body. The target, caught between breaths, jerks and topples backwards.
_____
Water streaming from her hair across her face, Janet is startled. She’s sure she heard a gunshot. She treads water, searching for Terry on the bank, spots his cream towel crumpled at the water’s edge, but she can’t see him. ‘Terry?’ she calls, anticipating an answer. The water is soothing, refreshing, easily the best experience of a trip she wishes she hadn’t come on. When he doesn’t answer, she yells, ‘Terry? Did you hear that?’ The silence disturbs her. ‘Terry?’ Annoyed, uncertain, she kicks and swims towards the bank, and when her feet touch the sandy bottom she wades forward, calling, ‘Terry?’ The touch of air on her wet skin makes her feel cruelly exposed in her nakedness, and she whimpers, ‘You’re not being funny!’
As she steps onto the bank, a shadow stretches across the sand. She glances up the slope, shielding her eyes from the bright sun, and sees a slim figure in khaki clothes. And a rifle. The stranger is smiling.
_____
Colin is used to sifting through the hulks of charred vehicles and he takes deliberate care, like an archaeologist, but the ute’s carbonised, melted interior isn’t yielding much evidence. Nevertheless, he spots anomalies that are familiar clues. The keys are melted into the ignition, so the vehicle was dumped. There are piles of ash in the back seat, and in the rear tray, that don’t appear to be parts of the vehicle. Luggage? Stolen vehicle then.
Around the wreck, he finds more pieces to the puzzle. Tyre tracks coming in and pulling away. Another vehicle. Could be just someone curious when they found it by the road. Could be the person, or people, who set it alight. Two sets of boot prints are visible in the dust. So, two people. He finds rumpled, discoloured earth – only one set of prints. And then he sees the drag marks and imagines a picture he doesn’t want to find.
Fifty metres away, among the stunted, twisted trees and underbrush, he finds the makeshift shallow grave. He doesn’t need to dig. A wild dog has recently rooted out and gnawed a hand and arm.
_____
Gunindee Downs is one of six stations owned by the Merritt Corporation, and Derek Foulds, who flies choppers on boundary checks and cattle musters for the Corporation, routinely passes over the station.
Originally owned by the MacPherson family, in its heyday the station employed twenty-three aboriginal and white stockmen and was home to their wives and children, but the persistent desert and successive government policies inevitably broke the defiance of the last MacPherson, so that, when Merritt lawyers came with their promises and money, Eric MacPherson seized his chance and sold his inheritance to wipe his debt. The stockmen were sacked and replaced by a single manager and a couple of lads. The workmen’s quarters fell into disrepair, the once beautiful oasis of gardens dissolved into the sand, and the sheds rotted. Only the old homestead survived, hunkered under its wide verandas, to serve as eating and sleeping rooms for the Corporation’s employees. It’s commonly known that ghosts of the former MacPherson family drift through the decaying structure, on moonlit, windless nights, and sigh at the ruin.
A black funnel of smoke catches Derek’s attention, while he hovers over the Thirty Mile Bore, assessing the number and condition of the cattle clustered there. The black line, spiralling sharply skyward, spreads at its peak like a stain against the blue sky, and appears to be rising from a point beyond the property’s boundary, near Turner’s Creek. He’s surprised he didn’t notice it when he flew in. He tilts the joystick and banks towards the creek.
As he homes in on the source, he sees the remnants of a dust trail swirling in the distance, arrowing from the creek towards the highway, and glimpses a flash of metallic light at the head of the dust. It crosses his mind that whoever is scurrying away started the fire and he considers giving chase, but his fuel is limited, and he knows he should already be heading back to base, and definitely not chasing dust clouds. He manoeuvres to hover above the creek, close to the burning object, and recognises the outline of a four-wheel drive in the inferno. Why the hell would someone dump and burn a vehicle this far out? he wonders, as he descends to land.
_____
Colin Perkins looks at the sticky note on his laptop. ‘When did she call in?’
‘Mid-morning, Sarge, while you were checking the wreck on the Port Gordon highway,’ says Constable Tanner.
‘How long did she say he’d been missing?’
‘Since yesterday morning. Twenty-five hours. Him and a bloke named Geoff Edgely.’
‘Who’s Edgely?’
‘Works for Tableland Mining. I rang them. You spoke to him and gave him Carpenter’s contact. He was going out to make an offer. They expected him back last night.’
Colin slams his fist against his thigh, lifts his akubra with his other hand, and scratches his head briefly. If he dropped in to the Carpenters after checking the wreck – but he didn’t. ‘I don’t need Milt to go missing now, not with a crazed idiot running around out there.’
‘Sorry, Sarge, there’s more.’
‘What?’
‘Chopper pilot from the Merritt Corp radioed in twenty minutes ago and reported he’s found two more bodies, and another burned-out vehicle. I’ve got Rick heading out there.’
‘Where?’
‘Turner’s Creek. Out near the Gunindee Downs homestead.’
‘Christ!’ Colin swears in exasperation. ‘What the hell is happening?’
‘And that Wheedon thing?’ Ian says. ‘They found some poor bloke in the caravan, what was left of him. They don’t know for sure, but they figure he was shot too.’
‘That makes -’ Colin pauses on the math. ‘Six.’ He leans against the windowsill, stares out at the bright blue sky, and swears under his breath. Not you, Milt. Jesus Christ, not you too. He turns to Ian, and says, ‘Ring Todd Williamson over at Port Gordon and tell him we have six probable murders on our plate.’ He hesitates. ‘Possibly eight.’ He swallows and continues. ‘Tell him we need a quality forensics team out here now. Then take Jensen and Wright to the Carpenter place. Search the country thoroughly, especially towards the Great Desert. There’s a chance you’ll find - a chance you’ll find a burned-out vehicle.’ He locks eyes with Ian. ‘If you do, I want to know straight away. Okay?’
‘You’ll know,’ Ian assures him. ‘Want me to ring Mrs Carpenter?’
‘I’ll ring Pat - Mrs Carpenter,’ Colin replies. ‘Be thorough with whatever you find. We need every detail. And see if Jimmy Douglas can help with some tracking. He knows the country out there.’ He turns to look out the window again.
Ian puts his hand on Colin’s shoulder. ‘You should take a break after you’ve spoken to Mrs Carpenter, Sarge. We’ll keep you up to date when we’re out there.’
Colin nods. ‘Thanks, mate. I will.’
_____
Pat Carpenter’s voice quivers at the other end of the radio and Colin wants to reach through the crackling airwaves to comfort his friend, to reassure her that Milton is fine, and he’ll turn up like last time, but there’s too much distance, and he knows intuitively it would be a lie.
_____
When she signs off, Pat sits in her armchair for a long time, staring into the brittle mid-morning light at the shimmering line of the horizon, waiting for the police to arrive.
_____
The news Colin expects comes as evening settles over the desert. Ian rings, his voice solemn. Burned-out Ford ute. Two victims shot with a high-powered weapon. Colin thanks him and hangs up.
He walks outside and stands on the porch of the Meredith Police Station in the cool evening air and a tiny breeze chisels at the cracks in his face and neck. Away in the west, the faintest trace of dying sunset paints an amber brush stroke beneath the wash of purpling sky. Windows along the street spill yellow light onto the gravel and bitumen. He watches the headlights and taillights of the first mining ute circle and stop outside the Meredith Pub to disgorge a load of miners. Raucous voices rupture the calm evening. A car and caravan roll by, heading north, and Colin habitually memorises the number plate. Queensland number. Tourists: probably middle-aged refugees, running from teenage adults and double mortgages to lose themselves in the beauty and expanse of the great outback. The news hasn’t broken anywhere, yet, of the drama unfolding on the edge of the desert.
He ponders why this wild country and its hostile environment holds such intense attraction to city people and overseas visitors. Red dust. Heat. Isolation. Lack of water. Flies. Yet they come in droves, especially young men, seeking their fortunes like the mining prospectors did in the Nineteenth Century. Most young men are here for the mining money, and lots of it, but they piss it down the urinals, and gamble and fuck it away every weekend in the pubs and brothels. He’s seen young men arrive to find work at the few surviving stations, searching for the romanticised images of stockmen, littered through adverts, films and books, and finding only hundreds of kilometres of harsh, lonely distance and dust. A handful of lucky ones stick it out, but mostly he sees the gaunt ghosts of the former boys skulk onto buses and trains, heading south to the city they spurned, a little older, not a lot wiser, but cured of their romanticism, innocence dried out by the unrelenting desert. ‘Need to be less of a cynic,’ he mutters, as three four-wheel drives deliver another mining crew to the pub. Rock music spills out of the pub door when it opens to suck in the workers.
He didn’t tell Pat Carpenter about the murders, or what he feared for Milt and the mining chap, this morning. Now he has to tell her the worst news possible, and it sickens him. He’s known the Carpenters for fifteen years, dropped in on his regular trips, had a few beers too many with Milt, and laughed and ruminated and argued. Now Milt is a statistic, like the young couple at Turner’s Creek, the man buried beside the Port Gordon highway, and the couple in the truck rest bay. He feels a tear welling behind his eyes and thumps his fist against his thigh to break the emotion.
He glimpses a faint lightning flash to the northwest, and turns to gaze in that direction, expecting a second flash, vaguely remembering a recent television weather report about a cyclone gathering momentum in the Indian Ocean. There’s already a terrible storm gathering here, he muses laconically. When the news races across the web and phones and breaks like thunder on the television and in the papers down south, it will expose the sickening truth at the heart of the desert, and the whole nation will turn its eyes on Meredith. He’s seen it before – stories of mad men going berserk with guns, the worst being that mongrel in Tasmania last century. It turns spotlights on communities, ruins them, while city people speculate who’s killing who and why. The government toughened its gun laws after that Tasmanian tragedy, but if a man wants a gun it’s not so hard to get one. Plenty of blokes didn’t hand in their unregistered weapons back then, just buried them. And he wonders from where the killer out there in the desert got his illegal, high-powered rifle? Those guns are very hard to come by. Another lightning flash distracts him, too far away for thunder. The storm is gathering.
A Pajero drifts along the main street, grey-green hue momentarily lit by the streetlight outside the police station. Colin checks the number plate - South Australian - another traveller thinking he’s safely cocooned in the desert, free of the city cares he left behind. If only you knew the truth, mate, he thinks.
And he knows that, when the news breaks tomorrow, or the next day, people all over the country, in towns and on farms, will rush to lock their windows and doors, and ring their families to check on them, because the beast is loose again in the desert, and hungry for blood. He’s hunted the beast before, across plains and dunes, tracked it to its lair, and helped others lock it away so it can’t kill any more, but this time it’s stalking the desert with ruthless cunning and a high-powered rifle, leaving a trail of burning wrecks. And he smells fear oozing from the earth.
‘I need a drink,’ he mutters. He descends the steps of the police station veranda and crosses the road, heading for the pub.
_____
Pat knows why Colin Perkins stands in her doorway. She’s waited all morning for him to arrive. She reads the tired lines in his ruddy face, but she hardly hears the words from his lips. She knows what he’s come to say, long before he says it, and she pities him. ‘Come in, Colin,’ she says quietly.
He takes off his hat, and bows his head respectfully, as he steps into the house.
She turns away to summon her courage, and her hands start shaking, so she clasps them, to bring them under control, before she turns to Colin, and says, ‘Sit down. Cup of tea?’ Her voice sounds treacherously brittle.
Colin shakes his head, avoiding her gaze, and a terrible silence hangs between them.
She breaks it with, ‘You’ve found him then?’
The simple question drags Colin’s eyes up, and he sees, beyond her weary, expectant expression, the well of strength within, and why Milton Carpenter loved this woman. ‘I’m sorry, Pat,’ he says.
She wants to reply, ‘That’s okay, Colin. It isn’t your fault. I understand,’ but sorrow betrays her, and all that escapes from her lips is a choking sob. Shocked at her failure, her face melts into a torrent of tears.
Colin cradles her to his chest and lets her cry out her grief inside the big old homestead that Milton Carpenter battled to keep for her.
_____
On the return drive from Willunyaburra Station, Colin pulls over on the highway verge and climbs out of his Range Rover to take a piss. He stares at the dark clouds piling up in the northwest and figures the cyclone is heading straight for Port Gordon. The most recent weather report, in the morning, before he headed out to see Pat, said the cyclone would cross the coast in the evening and possibly roll into the Great Desert. He sees lightning flash in the cloud and knows it’s a big storm coming. He’s seen plenty over the years, and he knows when they’re bringing trouble. And this one’s timing couldn’t be worse.
The other storm is breaking across the Australian media in the capital cities today. Killer loose in the desert. Six dead. Police baffled. He knows the journalist jackals are eager to follow the path of the rabid killer wolf; expects to see chartered news planes and choppers appearing over Meredith, and the murder sites. They’re probably already arriving in the town, waiting for him with their cameras and recording phones, hungry for every juicy titbit that they can scavenge. Media frenzy. He hates journalists more than he hates killers because they get in his way with their inane questions and arrogant belief that they have the right to tell everyone everything they can.
He zips his fly and climbs into his vehicle. The clues are mounting: bodies; tyre tracks; foot prints; none of the victims connected, except by circumstance; everything meticulously planned to eliminate evidence; no cartridge shells at the scenes; wounds indicate a high-powered rifle, almost certainly illegal and unregistered; vehicles burned to eradicate fingerprints and DNA; vehicles stolen from each murder site, and used to get to the next; the shooter an expert marksman, except some victims executed at point-blank range. The latest victim had a Pajero.
And he remembers the grey green Pajero in Meredith, last night, and feels a sharp twinge in his throat. And he hears the first rumble of thunder from the approaching cyclone as he reaches for the radio.
_____
Lucas Driscoll has a wife and two kids in the city. He keeps their pictures displayed on his cluttered desk in his car yard office, and he shows them to everyone he doesn’t know. ‘No, mate, not divorced,’ he tells those who ask. ‘Separated.’ His wife walked out on him when his car hire business went broke, and she took the kids with her to the other side of the city. He refused to accept her request for a divorce. Instead, he sold the house to repay his debts, gave what was left to his wife, gathered his few possessions, and answered an advertisement for a car yard manager/salesman in Port Gordon. He would show his wife he could make enough cash to go back to the city and reclaim his family. That was three years ago. He hasn’t been back, and his business isn’t flourishing. He gets by on sales of second-hand vehicles to the locals, and a once-in-a-blue-moon sale of a new four-wheel drive to stranded tourists, or mining agents flush with money. He hungers for a fleet commission with a mining company, but he knows that will be a miracle.
There are plenty of places in Port Gordon for men to amuse themselves - pubs, football clubs, brothels - but Lucas likes a little club eighty kilometres away, in Meredith. The girls working at the ‘Heat and Sweat’ make him feel special, treat him like a lover, especially the redhead, Jenna, so he dresses in leather, hops on his Suzuki, and rides to the club on weekends to spend time and cash in languid arms. He comes back to his two-bedroom unit, satisfied and a little drunk, knowing his wife will never be a Jenna and he will never see her again.
It’s late, and he’s riding home, following the white line, exhausted from the evening’s pleasure, hazy from four beers, but he’s wary this time of night. Kangaroos and wild dogs can instantly appear, and they can kill a man on a motorcycle. He had one narrow escape, five months back: big red boomer hopped onto the road and stared him down, and he went bush, flipping over the handlebars when the front wheel dug into the red sand, smashing his left elbow against the hard earth. The bike was okay - few scratches and dents - but his elbow took six weeks to mend.
Distant headlights blind him. They bear down and roar past in the form of a lorry on its way to Meredith. Otherwise, the highway is dark and empty. Lightning flashes along the horizon, and he remembers there’s a cyclone heading in, and grins at his timing. Back in bed before it hits, he thinks, and he winds out the throttle, daring a roo to jump out tonight.
So the appearance of a man on the edge of the road, waving for attention as he races past, startles him, and he slows quickly, brake light flaring, turning the highway red in his wake. He makes a U-turn, wondering what’s happened to the poor bastard, and sees the figure take form in his headlight. He spots the shadowy silhouette of a four-wheel drive off the road, in the saltbush. Accident maybe? Probably a miner had too much to drink and lost control, and he grins because the highway here is dead straight. As he stops beside the stranger, he flips up his visor and asks, ‘Need some help, mate?’
_____
Colin waits at the station for a call or email. If his hunch is right, the next vehicle they need is a Pajero with South Australian plates. Highway patrols are alerted. A chopper from the mine is on its way, commandeered to fly the highway. Out here, it can’t be too hard to track one four-wheel drive. The only catch will be if the shooter’s already moved on to his next victim’s vehicle.
And the call comes from a patrol. ‘Sergeant Perkins?’
‘Speaking.’
‘Constable Eckert, Port Gordon, Sergeant. We’ve found your Pajero.’
‘Whereabouts?’
‘Fifteen clicks out of Port Gordon. About a click off the highway.’
‘Burned out?’
‘Yep.’
‘Body?’
‘Not at the site, Sarge. Just the vehicle. Footprints head back to the highway, so whoever set it alight went back to the road afterwards.’
‘Start checking around for anyone missing. Check if any truckies or anyone’s picked up a hitchhiker. And be quick. If there’s no body there, this bastard could be holding someone hostage. I’m heading over your way.’
_____
He pauses on the verge, indicator ticking, looking both ways. No vehicle visible in either direction. The column of black smoke, four kilometres up the highway, is arching to the south-east, bending with the rising wind beneath the ceiling of rain grey clouds, and he’s glad he’s off the motorbike and in the car before the rain sets in. Thunder rumbles all around. Lightning flashes. Rain spots spatter across the windscreen as he pulls onto the highway and accelerates.
It feels good to be driving a familiar vehicle, even a hired one. The Golf was a favourite, bought brand new, but for the alibi to work it was an important sacrifice. When he gets home from his weekend away, he’ll report his car stolen and open the insurance claim, while the police pull the pieces of the puzzle together and conclude he’s a lucky bastard in what will unfold as a chain of tragic murders across the north.
After years cooped in concrete and glass, wrestling burgeoning policies and pedantic procedures, it’s been a long, arduous, exhausting four-day weekend, but it’s been good hunting and everything he was seeking. Challenging, frantic, fulfilling to the core, the thrill of the hunt seethes through his veins, and, despite the break between, he’s pleased the military skills he honed in another place and time are still keen. It’s been a very good holiday.
He eases into the car seat, winds down his window, and enjoys the tang of the cool ocean air as he speeds away from the rising storm, heading south, heading home.