‘We don’t even know where east is,’ Niall said.
‘The sun comes up in the east and plants its arse in the west. Watch the sun, sheepshit.’
Jefferson then clenched his fists as he walked closer to Niall.
‘They didn’t send you out after us, did they?’
‘No.’
‘Dob us in to spend the rest of our lives in gaol?’
Niall stared him in the eye. ‘I escaped the same as you did.’
‘You better be telling the truth, then,’ Jefferson spat. ‘Because if you ain’t we’ll be ripping your guts out before you can think.’
Badger squatted with his head bowed.
‘You’ve got nothing to worry about there,’ Niall said.
‘Just make sure you’re right,’ Jefferson returned with a cold stare.
That morning and through the afternoon they walked down the other flank of the ridge heading towards where the sun had first come up. As cloud gathered from the west the warmth of the day was lost behind it. When they descended into the next valley they were met by a stream too broad and quick to cross so they were obliged to follow it upstream until they found a fallen tree they could use to ford the water.
On the other side they paused to look into the racing stream.
‘A net or something,’ Jefferson said. ‘If we had that we’d get us some fish or eels in no time.’
‘The water’s too dark to see anyway,’ Niall observed. ‘All the soil and leaves fallen into it have turned the stream bed black. It’s deeper than it looks too.’
‘Well, you come up with a better idea then,’ Jefferson challenged him.
‘I’m starving,’ Badger sighed. ‘There’s got to be something.’
As they pressed sluggishly on their way, Jefferson turned and winked at Badger. ‘Aye, and there will be something.’
He cackled the way he had when Niall had first come across them.
Niall decided then and there that as soon as night fell he would creep away. He had been wondering about the fate of the third man who had escaped with Jefferson and was now coming to an opinion about that. The whole idea of escape had been folly – there was nowhere, anywhere, to escape to here. As bad as gaol was, he still had a chance there. He could try to find the path back and take his medicine and hope that not stepping a foot wrong again might mean some years off his sentence. Or he could head in the opposite direction from Macquarie Harbour and cut a course along the coast. But he needed food to do that, to do anything. He was as starving as the other two.
During a late afternoon stop Badger scavenged around and managed to find a handful of small brown mushrooms sprouting fierce red blisters.
‘What do you think?’ he asked his companions. ‘Give them a go?’
‘You try first,’ Jefferson said.
The convict reluctantly put one to his mouth, bit into it and swallowed.
‘Not too bad,’ he said, shoving the rest of the mushroom in and following it with a second. He proffered the remainder on his open palm to Jefferson. ‘You want these?’
Jefferson stared at his hand and then his face.
‘I’ll see how they go down you first.’
‘The blacks live off the country here,’ Badger said, gulping another mushroom, ‘so we should be able to as well.’
‘Catch a kangaroo or one of those things up in the trees. Send sheepshit here to climb up after one,’ Jefferson laughed.
‘We could try to trap one,’ Niall said. ‘Dig a pit in the ground and cover it with thin branches and leaves.’
‘It’ll be you doing the digging, then.’
‘I don’t mind. I’ll get going first thing in the morning. Before you know it, roast kangaroo.’
Not long after they’d resumed walking, Badger clutched his stomach.
‘What’s wrong with you, nancy?’ Jefferson demanded.
‘Must be those mushrooms.’ Badger hunched over, coughing up the contents of his stomach.
‘God almighty,’ Jefferson said, halting. ‘Now it’s going to be you holding us up.’
Badger spewed again.
‘I’ll keep going,’ he promised, spitting the rank vomit taste from his mouth.
His face was a pasty, deadly grey.
‘He’s no good. We need to stop here,’ Niall argued.
‘I’ll be the one who decides what we do,’ Jefferson growled. ‘Not you, sheepshit.’
Niall helped Badger lie down.
‘I’ll get us a fire going,’ Niall said. ‘It’s getting towards dark anyway.’
He felt inside Badger’s pockets and slid out the two pieces of grey flint, building a nest of leaves and stringy bark, sparks flying easily when he struck the flint. A fire leapt to life before them and when Jefferson had his back turned he slipped the pieces of flint down one of his own boots.
Never quick on his feet, Niall might not outrun them in daylight, but under cover of darkness he could lose himself in minutes. He would head away before he starved or was killed.
‘Two nancies now,’ Jefferson mocked.
31
‘Who found him first?’
The sergeant spun around and it was a jarring demand rather than his usual quieter inquiry. What they were looking at now was always a fright, something you never got used to.
Smales’s face remained sucked in, his throat red. Other troopers had come running at the news and were bailed up in this secluded spot, panting and heaving.
‘Who?’ Niall demanded again.
They were all leaning over the prone body. No one was certain who had made the discovery, only that a message had arrived at the central police hut before whoever had delivered it had taken flight again.
‘No idea,’ Smales volunteered, peering down at the corpse as though it might have asked the question.
‘Here, hop out of the way,’ Niall ordered.
Even before he made any sort of examination he knew who they were looking at.
Niall pushed his way through, everything dripping around them. Arriving back at the central police hut after his walk to the river with Sarah he’d been called straight here. Someone had some gall, he thought, dumping a body so close to the field. This tucked-away thicket of scrub couldn’t have been any more than a mile from the fringe of the diggings on the road to where they’d settled the quarantined miners.
Niall crouched beneath an overhanging branch sitting heavy with rain, inspecting the body more closely.
‘If he’d been here longer we’d have smelt him a long time ago. And from a long way off.’
He bent over further, carefully shifting some grass and light branches partially hiding the dead man.
‘It’s the cold what’s preserved him,’ Smales offered.
‘Or he hasn’t been here that long.’
Niall was immediately in no doubt that this person was the same man he had seen last night at the circus. The figure lay fully clothed in red shirt and long brown velvet coat, brown serge trousers and scuffed and worn boots. The one eye visible was closed, his facial features bloodied. No hat meant it had come off his head elsewhere. His hands bore scratches and abrasions.
‘We might not have proof who brought him here yet,’ Niall said, as much to himself as anyone, ‘but we’ll see what we can find out.’
The growing gallery of spectators watched as the sergeant picked away the branches before lifting both legs in turn, seeing if anything lay beneath them. Then with some effort he rolled the body fully onto its side. Weirdly, with his chin pressed to his chest, his knees tucked up a little, the victim seemed to be sleeping through Niall’s examination. Only the wet, rank surroundings betrayed what had happened. That, and the rifle wound at the side of his skull Niall saw when he rolled the rigid body over completely.
‘One shot to the side of the head,’ he noted, to nods from the gathering. ‘What else?’
It appeared he’d been shot from close quarters. The side of his face was a mess, making him almost unrecognisable, his short
ginger hair congealed with blood. Niall poked and prodded the body, pulling the coat around it away and examining pockets, finding nothing. Most diggers carried all sorts of things with them, from licences to letters to mouthfuls of food, to more sentimental items like lockets and good-luck coins. To have your pockets empty was to be a misfit. He guessed whoever had dumped Oriente here had also rifled his pockets.
‘Robbery,’ someone said.
‘Maybe,’ Niall replied, carefully searching the remaining pockets. ‘He hasn’t got much on him.’
Besides the gunshot wound there weren’t any other obvious injuries.
‘Someone will know who he is,’ Smales said, standing before the close pack of onlookers. ‘You can’t have a good spell on the diggings and no one not know who you are.’
‘Unless you’re a new chum,’ a spectator beside him offered.
‘He ain’t,’ Smales sneered. ‘You don’t know anything about the diggings if you think he’s a new chum.’
‘He’s from here, all right,’ Niall confirmed. ‘And look here!’
‘Handkerchief?’ Smales said. ‘Can’t see how that’s any help though.’
Niall drew the material slowly from the digger’s pocket, as if performing magic.
‘I think this might be our missing man,’ he said, turning to Smales, who stared blankly back at him. ‘You know? Oriente. That tent we checked the other day, the cases and clothes you brought back?’
Niall stood up and showed Smales the red handkerchief. Stitched into a corner in white cotton were the letters PO.
‘Phillip Oriente,’ Niall said.
‘You reckon that’s him?’
‘I don’t think it’s a coincidence. There’s too many letters in the alphabet to match up exactly like this. It’s him, all right.’
‘It’s bloody murder, then. We need to get those blokes he was digging with.’
Niall shook his head. ‘I don’t think that’ll help us much. It’s somewhere else we need to be looking.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll find the others and make them talk. Give them a going over and they’ll say whatever we want.’
But Niall didn’t take Smales to task for his boasting or correct him in his opinions. The commissioner was tied up in this somehow, but he wasn’t about to say anything to Smales or anyone else when there was nothing he could prove yet. No one would believe there was truth in a simple drawing or in the fact that he had seen the murdered man close to the commissioner last night.
Neither was his and Smales’s continued examination of sufficient interest to the audience around them, who presently drifted away in their ones and twos, already airing their theories as to what had befallen the man. Soon only the other troopers kept them company.
‘Let’s get him back to the diggings,’ Niall ordered. ‘We can check him properly then. We’ll have a quick look in the scrub around here, too, in case there’s anything to see.’
They fossicked around a while but succeeded only in disturbing more showers from low-hanging branches.
‘God almighty, this place,’ Smales complained. He stood and watched as Niall jacked about under a bedraggled shrub searching for God-knows-what. It was exasperating to the others that the sergeant was keeping them out when it was obvious they weren’t going to find anything else. ‘Hopeless place,’ he said to Niall’s back.
Niall picked about a minute longer before turning to Smales. ‘There are a lot of hopeless places in this world. And hopeless people. One usually attracts the other.’
When he was ready Niall ordered the troopers to lift the body into a cart. Out of decency he threw a blanket over Oriente, covering him properly so no idle eyes could spy what terrible cargo they were carrying back to the diggings. He was already certain it must be Oriente; the spit of the man he had seen last night. He could imagine him lounging in his tent or leaning over his shovel with a clay pipe hanging from the corner of his mouth – just another digger, except for those he might have become entangled with. And that might now have cost him his life.
It was a solemn procession back to the diggings.
‘Looks like my idea of hiding him has been a great success,’ Niall muttered.
Even the worst drunks, the most irreverent prospectors, fell silent and respectful knowing the departed was passing by. They stood unsteadily to attention, their gazes divided between staring at the ground and at the returning party, searching for clues as to the identity of the dead man. Every person in their path stepped back more than was necessary, allowing them clear passage. One or two removed their hats and held them over their hearts, some over their trouser fronts. The wave announcing that a dead man was coming rippled well in advance of the funeral cart. Ahead they downed tools and hushed their mates, one sorry digger thrashing his mongrel dog with his hat to cease its barking but only succeeding in convincing the animal that some new game was afoot.
Unwittingly, the troopers escorting the cart back to the police huts had formed a rough line on either side of the cart accentuating the funereal effect. Niall and Smales rode out in front with the former now feeling decidedly uncomfortable at the spectacle they were creating. Death always brought an opportunity to talk, as well as reassurance that even the most anonymous were accorded a dignity and respect they might never have had while living.
‘How is that Delaney going?’ Smales asked Niall.
‘He’s going all right.’
‘You think he’ll try to pay us back? He said he would.’
Niall gave his horse a gentle prod in the ribs with his heel.
‘He’ll be in his own place again in no time. A month or two and he’ll forget about everything.’
‘You reckon so?’
‘I do.’
‘You think this cholera will be over then?’
‘It’s hard to say.’
When they arrived at the police compound they brought Oriente in and lay him down in a storage hut used when needed to house the dead before they were collected by the diggings undertaker, Barnaby Baker. The degree of preparation and care Baker took depended entirely on what payment he received for his services. According to rumour, with the destitute he wouldn’t do any more than spit on them before rolling them into a dusty hole somewhere.
‘You want me to tell Baker?’ Smales asked.
‘Not just yet.’
Left alone with the dead man, Niall pulled back the blanket to see if there was anything he’d missed in the bush. He would be going to see Stanfield again within the hour, questioning him as best he could about this man, though he knew the commissioner wouldn’t be one to volunteer much. To this point he’d denied knowing anything of Oriente, but when he was confronted with Oriente’s drawing he might have to sing a different tune.
Niall wondered what would happen if he was suddenly bushwhacked on his rounds. Who would take charge of his being and possessions if he was laid out dead like this digger before him? And the short answer was he knew there would be no one. Not while he was tied down to this diggings, banking pounds but still at the beck and call of others.
He leant closer to the body. What the gunshot had done to the side of the head was worse than he’d first thought and from such a close distance it had to be a deliberate killing. The skull was left gaping.
He again frisked Oriente’s clothing, loosening the long coat wrapped around him like a blanket. He sunk his hands into Oriente’s trouser and coat pockets and found nothing. There were no pockets sewn into the inside of his coat either but as he tumbled the body onto its side his eye was taken by a slight bulge at the centre of the coat’s bottom hem, right at the back. Kneeling beside the body he discovered something firm there, and taking the knife from his pocket he slipped a cut through the material and worked the object free.
It was a tiny wooden box with rounded edges on its top half. Whoever had been through Oriente’s pockets before had missed it but his convict blood knew all the hiding places. Holding it up on his palm, he saw two dainty brass hinges and carefully l
ifted the lid. Expecting perhaps gold or jewellery inside, he was disappointed to find only a patch of blackened material fixed to a raised lozenge of oak.
He was puzzled then as to why Oriente had gone to the trouble of hiding this thing such as he had. For minutes he sat on the floor and stared at it, wondering what it could mean, before closing the lid and turning it into his own coat pocket.
Small things held value. That was something else he knew from his own time at Macquarie Harbour. And what was of no consequence to one man might be valuable to the next. Still, it was hard to see how this trifle could be of worth to anyone.
32
With the body safely locked up, Niall marched out to find the commissioner, to try to prise out of him what he could about Phillip Oriente. But when he knocked at Stanfield’s hut there was no answer, a trooper telling him the commissioner had already left to inspect the boat.
Niall stood there, annoyed that he’d been all ready to have it out with Stanfield. Now he’d have to gee himself up a second time, resolved there would be no backing out for the commissioner this time.
He dragged his feet across the diggings.
There was a melancholy across the field today, a watery grey sky hanging low and weary and everyone with their heads down as if they couldn’t bear to look up, as if they knew of another man dead and were in mourning.
Any interest in mining seemed to be passing.
Niall trudged over every hump and ridge as he made his way to the Victory, where onlookers also congregated.
The carpenters had been working three days on the boat now and those who gathered could see how much progress had been made. The timber work was almost complete as the carpenters stalked about with rags hanging out of their pockets and small planes in their hands, taking off any rough edges catching their notice. The large canvas sail played over their heads as a breeze passed, sometimes ruffling an edge, at other times pushing it up from beneath as though someone had reached high and shoved their hand into it.
Niall peered over the heads of men and women in front of him and could see Charles Stanfield across the other side of the boat. The sergeant stood gathering his thoughts a while before gradually working his way around.
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