‘There’s no guarantee this is Naiyana’s blood. It could be his. Or Dylan’s.’
That was also true. She glanced at the officers patrolling the scene. Now outside of WA she was forced to ditch the local help, and felt a little lost without Rispoli’s intelligence, Anand’s humour and even Barker’s no-nonsense approach. But such was a job with the MCS. Fly in, work with what you get, investigate and fly out.
She left the sweep of the area in the hands of the local sergeant advised by the inspector from Alice Springs. It was the onward progress of the group she was interested in.
From here it was assumed that Ian, Naiyana and Dylan had at least a week’s head start. Bulletins had been issued around the state asking for people to come forward if they had been approached by either Ian or Naiyana. Or if anyone recalled seeing them in the area.
Emmaline was desperate to locate them. They might be the only people who could tell her what had happened in Kallayee. As witnesses or perpetrators. But for every hour that passed, the chance of the trail growing cold increased.
116 Lorcan
As he sat slumped against the wall, the urge to get out and look for Dylan made his whole body tingle, stinging with sweat and heat as if boiling from the inside out. He gave it five minutes, until he was sure Naiyana or Ian weren’t coming back, before he left the house. Heading out of Kallayee was a great dust cloud, both vehicles gone.
He broke into a jog, which quickly became a run. He called out for his son as he peered into buildings and around the back of shacks that echoed the name back to him. He passed the spot where he had shot Stevie. And where Mike had been executed. The bodies were gone, all trace of them vanished apart from blood on the sand. They were being disposed of. His wife was helping with the disposal. He wondered if he was next. And then Dylan.
As he stood there another blood-curdling thought arose. What if Dylan had seen him murder Stevie like he himself had witnessed Ian murder Mike? What would a six-year-old do after that? He’d be terrified. He’d run. So Lorcan ran too. Dylan was here somewhere.
117 Naiyana
The cab was as silent as it could possibly be given the condition of the road and the rocks chattering against the underside of the ute.
The enormity of what she had done filled the space. She might not have shot Mike and Stevie herself but she had assisted in disposing of their bodies. She was an accessory now, much like the hundreds of trinkets and ornaments held at the storage facility in Perth. Maybe she would never be back to collect them. But that didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was what she might have to do next. Whether she wanted to or not.
She thought back to the rusty ute, Ian flicking the match inside, the flames bursting into life and Ian cynically making light of the whole thing. She found it both disturbing and reassuring. That resolute and absolute will to act. To see through to the end what was started. She was the same. Especially when there was an end goal. She had pursued Brightside Foods to the very end. And she would continue to pursue Chester Grant. She would make sure that he did the appropriate thing, vote the appropriate way, make the world a better place for as long as she was able.
But could she control Ian? Was this truly love or was this the dictionary definition of a torrid affair, a vicious storm that caused enormous upheaval? With the possibility of more to come. After all he had lied, cheated, stolen and killed. But was she any better?
She broke the silence as they approached Kallayee, manoeuvring around ruts that were now mapped into her subconscious.
‘What happens next?’
She ushered the question into the open even though, like on the first night they met, she worried she might not be able to fully comprehend what was next. Ignorance wasn’t just bliss. It was more than that. It was safe. Unless she was being led like a cow to the slaughter.
Ian didn’t look at her as he spoke, eyes focused dead in front. In command or at least wanting it to appear that way.
‘I want to be with you.’
Naiyana didn’t respond. She didn’t know what to respond.
‘Since saving you from that building I haven’t – I can’t – stop thinking about you, Naiyana. Every day, every night.’
His sincere profession of love. At least in mere words. She had been consumed by it too but now she saw it for what it was. An infatuation – a chance to redeem himself – that had curdled his brain. And hers. For too long.
She repeated her question.
‘So what happens next?’
‘We leave town.’
She didn’t respond to this immediately. She needed to find out what his plans were for Dylan. And Lorcan.
She glanced across to find that he was staring at her. The steely eyes bore into her. They wanted an answer. She told him the truth.
‘Not without Dylan.’
That broke the eye contact, his drifting away. She sensed bad news.
‘You’ll have to leave him behind,’ he said, coldly.
‘I’m not doing that.’
‘For the minute.’
‘No – not for the minute.’
‘We have to make a clean break. We’ll come back for him later.’ The coldness in his tone suggested he wasn’t going to back down. She responded with fire in hers.
‘He’s not a bag of bloody laundry, Ian. Or a partner in crime you can dump – or dispose of – when they fulfil their purpose.’
They locked eyes again. She tried to read his face.
‘If we take him, what do we do with Lorcan?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean, what do we do?’
‘If we take the only thing he has left what do you expect him to do? Mike said he killed Stevie. He could do it again.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ she replied, ignoring the doubts festering in her soul, all certainty evaporated from her psyche.
‘He looked very nervous when we met him,’ said Ian.
‘He nearly fell off the bike.’
‘Which we found close to where Stevie was shot. With the tyres slashed. Why would that be?’
Though Lorcan was above all a coward, access to the rifle meant that he was capable of something inhuman. But still… it was Lorcan. He wouldn’t shoot someone to death.
‘No. I know my husband. He doesn’t have the guts. He sent me out to meet with you despite knowing you could be capable of anything.’
She looked across at her passenger wondering what exactly he was capable of.
‘So what’s the answer?’ he asked.
‘We need to secure his silence,’ she said and looked at Ian. ‘You should also know that he does have a rifle.’
‘And you didn’t tell me?’
‘We all have secrets,’ she said, as they entered the deserted streets of Kallayee. In the distance a small dust storm seemed to be forming. It was the last thing they needed.
Naiyana reached her house, Ian walking alongside her, the rifle by his side. They exchanged a glance and he followed her in. The house was quiet, no sound other than the creak of their steps on the floorboards. She called out for her husband. Then her son. Receiving no answer, they searched the house. Lorcan and Dylan were gone.
‘Dylan’s backpack’s missing,’ she noted, running into the kitchen, opening a cupboard. It was almost empty. ‘And some food.’
Ian nodded. ‘Okay, they’ve legged it. Time for us to go too.’
She ignored the callousness in his voice. This was what he wanted after all. To run. Men were all the same in the end. They only wanted to run from trouble. Abandon everything and save themselves. But not this time.
‘I want Dylan.’
‘Later.’
‘I’m not going anywhere without him,’ she said as her eyes drifted to his rifle.
118 Emmaline
The blood on the dashboard was AB. Matching Naiyana Maguire’s blood type. It would go through DNA analysis later but seemed to confirm she had been in the vehicle. The questions now were, how much blood had she lost? And how had it happened?
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The search of the area surrounding the vehicle had uncovered no bodies and no blood trail.
‘Do you think she was already dead? Blood dries quickly out here,’ said Oily.
‘Hauling a body, alive or dead, would be difficult in this heat and pretty damn conspicuous,’ said Emmaline. ‘Especially with Dylan too. It’s not consistent with a desperate escape plan. So my guess is that she was alive when she left the ute. Injured, maybe even severely, but fit enough to support her own weight and comfort what was likely a distressed child. The question is where they went next. Anything from the hospitals?’
She directed this question to the local constable – Cooper – who had been attached to them like an intern shadowing on work experience. She was eager but overawed, dashing back and forth like a rabbit with the latest information.
‘There have been no reports of an injured female matching Naiyana Maguire’s description. Or a male matching Ian Kinch. Or a child—’
‘Keep on them.’
‘Will do, Detective Taylor.’ Her standard response. Overly formal, maybe even needy for praise. Emmaline didn’t have time for that.
She returned to the problem at hand. ‘They must have accessed another mode of transport. And not public transport. Too risky with an injured partner. And given the trace of gold in the cab they must be carrying some too.’
‘That’s a lot for one person to shoulder.’
‘Which indicates that they must like each other.’
‘A true Bonnie and Clyde,’ said Oily.
Emmaline couldn’t decide if their acts were romantic or desperate. It was easy to confuse the two. With great desperation came moments of unbridled emotion that could be mistaken for love. She’d been there before. Another ten years and she might be there again. In that case she would remain single. No point in following convention if you actually detest it.
‘Our best bet is to follow the money,’ she said. ‘In this case, gold. Have Cooper run a report on all gold dealers. We’ll try those first.’
She stopped Oily before he ran after their intern, who in turn was running towards a squad car. ‘Also any place that might accept gold in exchange for goods. Again, both legal and not-so-legal.’
119 Naiyana
Her eyes were still on the rifle. She had come to realize that a gun held a particularly grotesque knack of becoming the focus of a room, the ultimate scene-stealer. She waited for the barrel to rise and provide confirmation that she had made a terrible mistake, confirmation that she would lose everything, including her life out here. In a town she hated.
But the rifle stayed where it was. By his side. Instead he raised a question. ‘Where could he run to?’
She didn’t know. And in that she realized something. It was very unlike Lorcan to run. Especially with Dylan. Without means of transport. He wouldn’t put his son in danger. Unless…
‘Do you think he saw you killing Mike?’ she said, the tide of panic rising again.
This tide transferred to Ian, who now understood that there might be a witness on the loose. ‘He was nervous when he saw us. He could have sprinted back as we loaded the bodies.’
She nodded. ‘I think the whole falling off the bike thing was a lie. He was edgy because he saw you. He knew what you were capable of.’
The realization settled upon them like the dust that seeped through the busted gable wall.
‘Shit! I should have checked on Dylan,’ she said, angry at herself, hitting the wall and catching the edge of her mother’s mirror, causing it to fall and shatter on the floor. But she didn’t care about her broken heirloom or that she had nicked the side of her foot on a shard of glass. The only thing that mattered was her son.
‘If I had seen him, he would have told me what was going on,’ she said, aiming her vitriol at Ian. ‘But you insisted we get rid of the bodies.’
‘It was smart to focus on them. They had to be disposed of.’
‘It would have been smarter to focus on the living. The dead weren’t going anywhere. And we only had to dispose of them because you shot Mike!’ she yelled, spit flying from the corners of her dry mouth. ‘You better not have let anything happen to my child.’
She turned her eyes from him and looked around the kitchen. The broken kitchen in the broken house. She couldn’t stay here any longer, the tension and the hatred was unbearable. She made for the front door with Ian’s words stalking her.
‘They can’t have got far.’
He beat her to the car and climbed behind the wheel. When she tried to stop him, he told her that he needed her eyes. Which she could tell was a lie. But focusing her concentration on finding her missing husband and son seemed a good idea.
‘Would they go down the tunnel?’ asked Ian as he started the ute.
‘No, Dylan was afraid of it,’ she replied. ‘Lorcan would head for town.’
‘We didn’t meet them on the way in.’
‘Minus a vehicle they would take the shortest route, across the bush. Plenty of places to hide as well if needed.’
Following her suggestion he hitched a left at the crossroads and made for a direct path off-road to Hurton.
They reached the sand and scrub quickly. She glanced around from window to window, the not knowing her son’s whereabouts clawing at her insides.
‘Do you think he could make it to Hurton?’ asked Ian. ‘Or contact the police?’
‘That doesn’t matter now,’ she barked at him, briefly hopeful that a speck in the distance was Dylan but angered to find it was another worthless shrub.
‘Of course it does. Even if they didn’t believe him, it would bring heat onto us.’
She didn’t care. They could bring all the heat they wanted. As long as she had Dylan.
‘Let’s run for it,’ said Ian. ‘If he has custody of Dylan, then he isn’t going to mention any of this. To anyone. For his and Dylan’s sake.’
For the briefest moment, she interrupted her scan of the outback to look her latest cowardly bastard of a partner dead in the eyes. ‘I want to find Dylan.’
120 Lorcan
He found Dylan at the entrance to the tunnel. Staring into the dark abyss. Even when he grabbed his shoulders, the boy didn’t flinch.
‘Are you okay, son?’ he asked. ‘Why did you leave the house? Why are you here?’
‘The tunnel is silent, Daddy. No arguments.’
‘Did you see an argument?’ he asked, nervous of what his son might say. If he had witnessed his father murder someone, then what? How do you silence your son?
‘I heard it. And I heard shots.’
‘And what did you see?’
‘I saw Mummy leaving with Ian.’
‘And nothing else?’
Dylan shook his head.
‘Good. We have to go, son.’
‘Where?’
‘Away. For a while,’ he said as he led Dylan outside, bumping into the door frame and stifling a grunt. As they made it into the fading sun, he looked around. There were no vehicles on the horizon, no dust clouds. He had no idea how much time they had. Or how much time he had wasted searching for Dylan. Naiyana and Ian could be back at any time.
He started to jog, pulling Dylan along, his breathing constricted with the panic and the heat.
‘Why are we going, Daddy?’
‘We have to leave, Dylan. Before they come back. We’ll go to town. Quick!’
He stepped up the pace. The sooner they were out of Kallayee the better.
‘Where’s Mummy?’ asked Dylan, fear in his voice.
‘She’s gone,’ he replied, looking back at his son and stumbling over the collapsed fence by the coal shed, his eyes drawn to the pool of blood in the sand.
* * *
In five minutes they were at the edge of town. He gazed at the bush and distant, rolling sand dunes. Making Hurton was doable but slower and more dangerous with the child in tow. Especially as Dylan was reluctant to go any further. Lorcan showed him his favourite dragon-patterned backpack of so
me cartoon character he had watched on endless repeat. Dak or Zak or something like that.
‘We are going on a camping adventure,’ he said, trying to sell it to his son. ‘We might even camp out,’ he added but hoped to get to Hurton by nightfall. Nee – and more worryingly Ian – would be on their tail as soon as they realized they were gone.
Hand in hand, father and son took their first steps into the unknown.
As he helped his son along, Lorcan kept glancing back at Kallayee. It very, very slowly began to disappear into the distance, like he was escaping from a monster in some sort of panicked fever dream. The town was to be their dream. How wrong they had been.
121 Emmaline
With information needed quickly it was all hands to the pump. Including Emmaline. She had never been to Alice Springs before and found it to be surprisingly green, like an oasis in the desert, Anzac Hill dominating the town, the buildings glowing white in the hot sun. In the distance lay the MacDonnell Ranges, red and flat-topped like a giant fence encompassing the south of the town, broken only by Heavitree Gap, all roads and rail south funnelled towards it.
The dealer she found herself at had a view of the Gap. With Cooper putting together the off-the-book list, they were checking out one of the registered dealers, his services luridly advertised on the picket sign hammered into his well-tended garden. He was welcoming as she introduced herself, a twinkle in his eye that suggested a certain admiration of her looks. Possibly in the expectation that there was not much behind them. A sadly typical reaction that she enjoyed shredding to pieces.
She showed him the photos of Ian and Naiyana.
‘Seen them in here?’
The dealer was in his fifties, with neatly parted hair she supposed was meant to read as ‘refined’ but just came across as ‘staid’. He tore his eyes away from her face and gazed over the top of his spectacles at the photos.
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