The Roadhouse

by Kerry McGinnis

  ‘Sorry,’ I mumbled desperately, praying he would realise it was unintentional. Apparently he did, for no sudden blast occurred. Eyes on Bob, trying to signal my intention, I fumbled for the pocket’s opening, bending my wrist awkwardly to make what I was about to do believable once I’d closed my fingers over the hard shape of the knife and withdrawn it. I swayed against my captor again as my hand came out, then cried out as the knife dropped, and I let myself fall on top of it, shrieking with the very real pain of my wrenched ankle as I landed.

  Which was when I heard Mike and Len make their move. From where I now was on the ground – both my and Belligrin’s backs had been to the hut – I couldn’t see, but I was fully occupied anyway, sobbing, ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ as I rolled frantically to grab at the knife. My hands were sweaty and shaking and my first grab at it missed, but on my second try I got a grip on it and my thumbnail into the little hollow made for the purpose, and succeeded in opening the longest blade. It was a stock knife, of a type I knew well for Bob carried an identical one, and I knew that particular blade was almost the length of my forefinger. It mightn’t kill but perhaps it could cripple.

  I saw Belligrin jerk his gaze from me back to his other captives, then whip about to look behind him as I clutched the knife and lifted it towards him. Seated, I couldn’t reach higher than his thigh but that would do. Drawing a breath, I screamed, ‘Run!’ and drove the blade as deeply as I could into his leg.

  I expected to get shot and I can only suppose that stress and terror for Bob had made me hysterical, or surely I couldn’t have done it. My tears had been faked but it wouldn’t have taken much right then for me to cry in earnest for I had never been more frightened or felt as much pain in my entire life. My scream got both men moving, which probably saved a retaliatory shot from coming my way.

  Belligrin yelled in surprise as the knife went home. He roared, ‘Hold it!’ and then the gun went off as he made a sound like ‘Oof!’ and staggered sideways, hit by a fist-sized rock, hurled by Len. I heard the clatter of boots on stone and twisted about to see the pair of them running flat out towards him, Len aiming another rock and Mike with a two-handed grip on the pinch-bar.

  Belligrin brought his gun hand up and I screamed a warning for, by then, less than a metre separated him and Mike. I heard the hollow crack of steel meeting bone somewhere around Belligrin’s knee and an instantaneous retaliatory explosion as the gun went off again. The world seemed to freeze for long seconds before Belligrin tumbled slowly sideways, the gun spiralling away through the air. Then the bar fell from Mike’s hands as he ploughed face first into the ground, to lie as motionless as a pole-axed steer, his head a bloody mess.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Full-blown hysteria took me over then. I remember crawling, scuttling sideways like some limb-deprived crab to reach him, heedless of guns and killers. I remember a wailing cry that must have erupted from my throat and a harsh voice bellowing, ‘No you don’t, you bastard!’ as the gun flew past me, driven by a kick from one of the men. I watched Mike’s life-blood pool on the thirsty soil, my hands fluttering uselessly over the dark mass of his gory head while my heart broke in two.

  An agony of sorrow filled me. ‘Mike! Oh God, what shall I do? Mike!’ But he lay still, his strong body lax against the red earth and already a fly had come to buzz about him, drawn by the blood.

  ‘Get away!’ I screamed, swatting at it, and then Bob was there, trying to lift me.

  ‘Come away, girl.’

  I glared at him. ‘No! Give me your shirt.’ Another fly had followed the first. I couldn’t bear the thought of them touching him. ‘Now!’ I yelled, the tears streaming down my face. Wordlessly, Bob shrugged out of his overshirt. I dabbed impatiently at my wet eyes to clear them, but still the tears brimmed like rain as I wiped the blood away from his head, pressing the absorbent flannel against the wound as it continued to flow. ‘He died trying to save us. Because that monster was going to kill us all,’ I cried. ‘You know that, don’t you? He was never going to let any of us live – and now Mike’s dead …’ Another sob broke from me. It seemed my fate to cry for men I couldn’t have.

  ‘You’ve got that wrong, love.’ Len was suddenly beside me. ‘No way is he dead, not if he’s still bleedin’. Here, let’s have a gander.’ He peeled my hand away and lifted the sodden shirt to inspect the wound, parting the torn scalp with grubby fingers, something I’d failed to do. ‘Thought not.’ He nodded with satisfaction. ‘See here? The bullet’s just gouged a bit o’ bone outa the side of his head. Scalp wounds always bleed like crazy,’ he said authoritatively. ‘The extra blood must be there to grow your hair – or keep your brains working, I guess.’ The feeble joke passed me by unnoticed as I stared at him, a sudden wild hope replacing despair.

  ‘He’s alive? You’re sure?’

  ‘Of course. Here, you don’t believe me, feel this.’ He pressed my blood-stained hand against Mike’s sun-warmed back and, holding my breath, I felt the faint movement of his.

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ Forgetting my ankle, I made to scramble up, only to desist with a yelp of pain. ‘We have to get him to Harts Range and call the doctor. They’ve got an airstrip and a phone. Oh, hurry, hurry!’

  Eric, who was sitting on a groaning Belligrin and using his own belt to tie the man’s hands behind him, said, ‘What are we gonna do with Sonny Jim here? I think he might need a doctor too. Mike caught him a good ’un with that bar of his. Wouldn’t be surprised if he bust his knee. And he seems to be bleeding from the other leg too.’

  ‘Good,’ I said vengefully, wondering where I’d dropped the knife. ‘I don’t care if he dies! In fact, I hope he does. I stabbed him. Let him wait for the cops – they can see to it. Mike needs immediate attention.’

  ‘An’ you, Charlie,’ Bob said. ‘We’ll take him in the Rover. Let’s get you in first.’

  ‘Hang on.’ Eric’s head had lifted. ‘Vehicle coming. This’ll be the cavalry now.’

  It was. Tom Cleary came charging up the track, heedless of its inequalities, his vehicle lurching and shuddering like a live thing. And behind him where his dust ended, and driven at the same reckless pace, was the Garnet station wagon with Ute at the wheel and Mum in the passenger seat, clinging onto the doorframe. They all debouched at once, Tom’s furious questions completely drowned out by Ute’s thankful shout of, ‘Eric, my heart, you live still!’

  ‘Of course I do,’ he said rather testily. ‘I’m fine, Ute, but Mike isn’t. He’s been shot.’ To Tom he said calmly, ‘Why don’t you stop shouting the odds and take charge of your prisoner? I’m sick of sitting on the bastard. He’s broken Charlie’s ankle and put a bullet in Mike. We need to get ’em both back to your airstrip asap.’

  ‘I ought to arrest the lot of you,’ Tom said angrily, ‘taking the law into your own hands this way. You should’ve called me immediately … Is this him – Belligrin?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You can add kidnapping and attempted murder to everything else he’s done.’ I wanted to scream at him rather than explain but instead I said urgently, ‘Mum, can you please organise Mike into the station wagon? He’s been shot in the head and he’s unconscious.’

  ‘Charlie! You’re okay?’ Her eyes ran over me, wincing as they encountered my discoloured, badly swollen ankle. She knelt beside me, gathering me into a fierce hug. ‘I’ve been so worried! What did he do to you? Is your ankle really broken?’

  ‘I think it’s just sprained. And he didn’t do anything except tie me up and threaten me.’ I could see she didn’t believe me. ‘He didn’t touch me, Mum, if that’s what you’re thinking, though he threatened to, but I got away first. And fell down the stupid bloody hill, that’s how I hurt myself.’ I sniffed, feeling my treacherous eyes welling up again. ‘It just hurts so much and I thought he’d killed Mike, and he was going to shoot us all … We’ve got to get Mike to a doctor!’ I cried fiercely. ‘Why won’t anyone listen? The bullet didn’t go into his head but he could still die!’

&nb
sp; ‘It’s all right, Charlie,’ she soothed. ‘We will. And you too. Thank God I didn’t stick to Mike’s plan. We were supposed to wait but I couldn’t, so we came early and it’s just as well. Right, you sit still and I’ll get your young man loaded up. He can lie along the back seat if we bend his legs up.’

  ‘No, I’ve got a better plan. Get Bob to help me to the vehicle first. I can sit with him, cushion his head – God knows he doesn’t need it banging against the seat.’

  So that was what we did. Ute drove, muttering strange words in German or Polish whenever the vehicle hit a bump, while Mum sat tensely beside her, eyes glued on the driving mirror to watch how we were faring. ‘You’re very stiff,’ she observed at one point. ‘Did he hurt your back, Charlie?’

  ‘My neck. He grabbed me by it. It’s better than it was, still sore though if I jerk it.’ A wheel thudded into a pothole as I spoke, making me catch my breath. ‘Like that.’

  ‘I am sorry, Charlie,’ Ute called back. ‘Is damn hard, you know, to drive in this bugger-all where the road is not good.’

  ‘What?’ Mum frowned blankly.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said hurriedly. And to take my mind off my worries about Mike, I asked, ‘What was in the packet they made up for Belligrin? Which he never got to open, by the way.’

  ‘Jasper’s chain, inside a cardboard packet. Custard powder I think,’ Mum said vaguely. ‘It was all done very quickly. The chain was there on the bench and about the right weight. The packet was just the first one Mike grabbed from the cupboard. He chucked the contents in the sink and jammed the chain inside it. We still don’t know where the dog is,’ she remembered.

  ‘Jasper’s dead.’ I looked anxiously down at the unconscious man whose head I cradled. The bleeding had stopped, though I still held the soaked flannelette bunched against the wound. The cloth had stuck to the drying blood and I feared to pull it away. ‘Belligrin shot Jasper and dragged his body into the scrub over the creek. That’s how he got me. I was following the drag marks when I stumbled onto his vehicle.’

  ‘We couldn’t work out where you’d got to,’ Mum said. ‘I thought maybe you’d had a fight with Mike and gone off to cool down. It’s what you always did when you and Annabelle … Then that fossicker, Len, turned up with the letter. I was all for calling the police but Mike wouldn’t have it – Bob, either. He said they’d bugger about till they got you killed.’ She was obviously quoting, and she paled, remembering, her hand creeping up to her chest. ‘I’ve never been so terrified. If I’d lost you …’

  ‘Well, you haven’t, Mum. Don’t get upset please, remember your heart.’

  ‘Charlie, you are my heart,’ she said baldly. ‘You’re all I have left.’

  The words jolted me, both from their meaning and the intensity with which she had said them. ‘I’m not,’ I protested feebly though the sweetness of hearing them rendered my automatic denial meaningless. ‘You have the Garnet, and Bob.’

  ‘And neither would be worth spit without you,’ she said fiercely. ‘I couldn’t have borne it if I’d lost you so soon after your coming back to me. First the op and then this …’

  ‘Oh, Mum, I’m sorry.’ I stretched a hand forward as far as I could and she moved awkwardly about in her seat to reach back and take mine. Her clasp was warm and strong, her upside-down hand thin and sinewy within mine. ‘I didn’t stay away because of you. I just never felt you needed me in your life.’

  ‘Well, I do. We’re too alike, Charlie. We don’t show our feelings. But it doesn’t mean – it’s never meant – that I don’t love you. Your father found that hard to accept too. He said I was emotionally crippled, and my being so had damaged you. I think it was why he preferred Annabelle. Emoting was her forte. I always wondered why it was you rather than her who wanted to act.’

  Because, I saw in a sudden flash of insight, playing a part made it easier to pretend all the things I felt but had trouble saying or showing. Then Mike’s head moved against my thigh, driving everything else from my mind. He moaned once but remained comatose. I slid shaking fingers along his neck, feeling for a pulse, my voice catching in sudden terror.

  ‘I can’t find it.’

  ‘Try just under his jaw,’ Mum said. ‘Use your whole finger, not just the tip. Got it?’

  I obeyed and breathed again. ‘Oh, thank God, and here’s the road.’

  ‘Now we go very fast, Charlie,’ Ute promised. ‘Hang onto the hair, and we will be there before you find out.’

  There was something wrong with that sentence but I couldn’t puzzle it out now. Bracing my feet against the floor, I looped my arms around Mike’s body and we tore down the highway towards the police station, leaving the vehicles behind us buried in our dust.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  What was left of the day passed in a daze of nerve-stretching anxiety as we waited for the flying doctor and irritability on my part at what seemed like endless paperwork. Tom had his own priorities and was desperate to get some sort of statement from me before I escaped into town. Then Doctor Spears, as thorough and imperturbable as when he’d come for Mum, insisted on examining me too before loading both mine and Mike’s stretchers into the plane.

  ‘I’ve sprained my ankle,’ I said crossly, ‘and hurt my neck, that’s all. I’m fine. Mike’s been shot, for heaven’s sake. Can’t we just go?’

  ‘As soon as I’ve checked you over,’ he replied, flashing a torch in my eyes. ‘Hmm, well you seem okay, if a little stressed. I’ll just strap you in: we don’t want you falling off, do we? Molly, I’d wait a few hours before ringing the hospital. Charlie will be fine but they won’t be able to tell you much about Mike until he’s had a scan done.’

  ‘Thank you, Clive.’ Her face was anxious as she reached to clasp my hand. ‘Try not to worry, Charlie – he’s in good hands now. I’ll be in tomorrow. I’ll see you then.’

  At long last the door thudded shut, and Doctor Spears and his nurse belted themselves in as the engines turned over, then ran up to screaming point; finally, we were moving. Mike hadn’t stirred again since that moment in the vehicle and I was desperately worried about him as I felt the wings lift, heard the thud of the wheels clunking into their wells and let go of the breath I’d been holding.

  There was, of course, more paperwork at the hospital. Mike’s stretcher vanished down a corridor while I was answering questions about us both, then my pulse, temperature and blood pressure were retaken and I was wheeled off to the X-ray department to wait my turn in the queue.

  Visiting hours that evening brought Rae Thornton to my room. ‘How are you, Charlie? Molly rang – she told me what happened. I was never so appalled!’ Her thin gold wedding band caught the light as she greeted me and took my hand in a warm clasp. She was wearing a soft pink blouse that went well with her silvery hair. She glanced at the support collar I wore. ‘You injured your neck as well? My dear, what a frightful experience for you all, but you’re safe now.’

  ‘I don’t know that Mike is,’ I said. ‘They haven’t told me anything.’

  ‘I’m sure the staff are doing their best for him.’ She sat on the visitor’s chair. ‘They must be confident he’ll recover or he wouldn’t still be here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I understand he has a head wound, and as we don’t have a neurological specialist in the Alice, they’d have flown him out, to Adelaide I imagine, if there was need of one. So that’s a good sign, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, of course! I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘No,’ she agreed. ‘Sometimes, when we worry, we can’t see the wood for the trees, so to speak. Is there anything you need that I can get you?’

  ‘No, that’s okay, thanks. Mum’s coming in tomorrow. I expect she’ll pack a bag – I came without so much as a toothbrush. Nothing seemed to matter,’ I confessed, ‘except getting Mike to hospital. He saved us all, you know …’ I found the words spilling out as if Rae’s common sense and kindness had released some sort of emotional
valve in me. I had answered Tom’s questions earlier, sticking strictly to the facts and grudging every second it took, but now I told Rae everything I had experienced that day; the terror of being held captive, my adrenaline-fuelled flight from the hut, the relief of Mike and Len’s arrival, along with my bitter regret that I had refused to stay where they’d found me.

  ‘Because he wouldn’t have been hurt, then,’ I explained. ‘When he fell and I saw the blood, I was sure he was dead. I thought the bullet had gone into his head.’ My voice trembled and she clasped my hand.

  ‘But it didn’t. And in any case, you can’t know how it would have ended if you hadn’t been there. It’s even possible your action of stabbing the wretch threw his aim off enough to save Mike.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘Yes, I do. You can’t blame yourself for the crimes others commit, Charlie.’ She patted my hand. ‘I’m sure Mike would tell you the same. So you’ve grown fond of him, have you? I hoped you would. And Molly tells me there’s another couple pairing up at the Garnet too?’

  ‘Ute and Eric, yes.’ I smiled shakily. ‘They got engaged at race time. She’s great – you’d like her, Rae. Her English is hilarious but she’s fluent in several other languages, so mixing up her expressions the way she does isn’t surprising. She and Eric go together like hand and glove.’

  Rae nodded. ‘It’s nice when you find your life partner, even if she had to come all the way from – where was it?’

  ‘Poland.’

  ‘Such a long way! And from what Molly tells me you may have found yours, too. I’m glad for you, Charlie.’ She beamed at me and I blushed and demurred, though not very convincingly.

  ‘I’ll think about that when he gets better.’

  ‘We’ll pray for him and I’m sure he’ll be just fine. I’ll leave you now. You won’t be in here long, so remember we have a spare bed when they discharge you. And give me a ring if there’s anything I can do.’