Beyond Fear

by Jaye Ford

  ‘Wanker.’

  ‘Smart-arse.’

  Monica held up a hand for them to be quiet. ‘What?’ she said into the phone. ‘Oh God.’ She put the hand to her chest and looked over at them, her mouth open in shock. ‘When?’ A pause. ‘What are the police saying?’ Another pause. ‘Oh God, it’s terrible.’

  Matt watched her talk for half a minute more, dread gathering in his chest. He knew what kind of call got a reaction like that. He ground his teeth, telling himself it wasn’t his job anymore. When she disconnected, he said, ‘What?’

  ‘John Kruger’s dead. Mum said he was beaten to death.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Tom said.

  Matt’s hand tightened around his coffee mug. ‘Where?’

  ‘At his home. His son Gary found him at the back of the house. Someone hit him with a piece of timber from the frame for his new verandah.’

  ‘Maybe he fell,’ Matt said, not wanting to jump to conclusions.

  ‘Gary told Dad his face was smashed in and there was blood everywhere. Oh God, it’s awful.’ The reality of it seemed to hit her then and she burst into tears. Tom took the phone from her hand and held her.

  A pulse thudded in Matt’s temple as he watched them. John Kruger and his family were old friends of Monica’s folks. Matt and Tom had gone to school with John’s three boys before the Krugers went to board at a high school in Sydney.

  ‘You’ve got to do something, Matt.’ Monica held onto Tom as she wiped her eyes with a tissue.

  ‘It’s not my job anymore.’

  ‘You could go out and help the local police, couldn’t you? You know what to do and they know you, don’t they?’

  ‘Mon, it’s not my job.’

  ‘You’re a bloody Homicide detective, Matt, and it’s John Kruger, for God’s sake.’

  Matt ran a hand through his hair, the coffee in his gut threatening to come back up as the urge to help clashed with the urge to close his eyes and get the hell away from the situation. Simple fact made the choice easier. ‘I’m not a cop anymore.’

  ‘Bullshit.’ Monica yanked a couple more tissues from the box on the microwave. ‘You haven’t resigned yet. You’re on leave. That still makes you a cop, doesn’t it?’

  Did it? Stress leave would count him out of any investigation and one phone call to the counsellor in Newcastle would make sure of it. Even without that, the condition of his knee right now would rule him out of anything that wasn’t behind a desk. ‘I wouldn’t be allowed near the case. I’m sorry.’

  The phone rang again. Monica grabbed it from Tom and took it out of the kitchen.

  ‘Sorry, Matt,’ Tom said. ‘She’s just upset.’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘So there’s nothing you can do?’

  Matt looked at his brother and felt like shit. The tough detective with the stellar career was too much of a coward to do his job. Jesus, it was pathetic. But the thought of fucking up another investigation, getting it all wrong, getting people killed, made him want to …

  He pushed away from the breakfast bar too fast. The stool toppled over, crashing into the clothes basket behind it.

  ‘Shit!’

  The girls’ little faces appeared over the back of the lounge.

  ‘Naughty Uncle Matt,’ Bree called.

  ‘Sorry, honey.’ To Tom he said, ‘I’m sorry, man. I’m really sorry. John Kruger didn’t deserve that. I gotta go.’ He bundled up his sweater and coat. ‘Where are the keys to The Beast?’

  Tom pulled them off a hook by the back door. ‘I’ll walk you out.’

  ‘No, don’t. Look after Monica and the girls.’ Matt shut the door on his brother and headed to the shed, breathing hard.

  Four minutes later, he gunned The Beast out of the driveway and took off fast down the country road. It was a hotted-up muscle car, totally pointless on a farm, even more considering the price of petrol these days, but there was something macho about being in control of a powerful vehicle. And God, he needed that right now.

  Six months ago, Monica and Tom wouldn’t have had to ask him to help with the investigation. He’d have jumped in The Beast and headed straight over to John Kruger’s house without a second thought. But that was before Somerset Street. Before he fucked up the hostage situation. Before three innocent people died to prove his instincts weren’t always right.

  Their son had had a gun. When he made a run for it, Matt told the family to stay inside, that they were safe where they were. The gunshots went off in his head again. The first two. The swift twin blast he heard from outside the house. The other three shots were always overlaid in his memory by the screaming, the terrified, hysterical wailing. And his own desperation to get to those people.

  He rubbed his knee. He should have gotten them out. He should have secured the site. He should have made the jump off the balcony, intercepted the son and got off a shot before the bastard doubled back to the house. But he misjudged the landing, tore his knee apart and let a nightmare loose on that family. Killing the maniac after the fact didn’t make up for Matt’s mistakes. A husband and wife and their teenage daughter were still dead.

  He sensed the gum trees on either side of the road start to flash past faster. Getting involved in the Kruger investigation wouldn’t do the cops or John’s family any favours. They needed someone they could trust. And Matt couldn’t give them that. Not anymore.

  ‘Fuck! Fuck!’ he roared.

  He tightened his hands on the steering wheel. He’d been the guy who always ran in to help, the one who knew what to do in a tight situation. He had instincts, he’d thought. That was why he became a cop. To put them to good use. His superiors had been sucked in by his confidence, too. He’d been fast-tracked into Homicide, trained for tactical response support. And now it didn’t matter how much bloody specialised training he had or that his instincts were screaming at him to do something – anything – because he didn’t trust himself to do the right thing.

  He saw the bend in the road up ahead. It was a tight left-hand turn that you had to brake through to negotiate safely. If he kept his foot on the accelerator … at this speed, in this car …

  It’d stop the gunshots in his head. Stop him thinking about the goddamn hero he’d thought he was.

  How bad was it, Matt? Bad enough to write off The Beast? Bad enough to …

  His mobile sounded the first chords of ‘Mr Bojangles’.

  It was his dad. The old man loved that song.

  Matt jammed his foot on the brake, way too hard for the corner and the speed he was going. Tyres squealed and the rear end spun out. Scenery flashed past in the wrong direction and he knew he was spinning – one full turn then another half before the car finally stopped, stalled in the dirt beside the road, facing back the way he’d come.

  He sat for a moment in the cloud of dust, his heart pumping hard and a hot shame filling him up. His dad didn’t need a cop knocking on his door telling him his son had topped himself. Matt had seen what that could do to a man. What kind of idiot was he to let a thought like that go through his mind?

  The phone was on the last few notes of the ‘Mr Bojangles’ ring. He picked it up with a shaky hand. ‘Hey, Dad.’

  ‘Hey there, Matty. You and Tom have a good night?’

  ‘Yeah, Dad, we had a good night.’

  ‘You okay, son? You sound a bit groggy.’

  Matt let his head drop back on the headrest. ‘Hung-over is all. What’s up, Dad?’

  ‘The Mazda you brought in last night. It’s not too bad. A bit of banging into place and a few parts should get them on the road. Be right to go this afternoon. I tried the phone number you wrote down but I can’t get through. When did the woman say she’d be in to collect it?’

  Matt thought about Jodie in the hallway of the pub again, shoving Anderson clear across the corridor. He smiled a little. ‘I told her we’d call. Give me the number and I’ll try again. She’s staying not far from here so if I can’t get through, I’ll head out there.’

  He found a
pen and took down the number.

  ‘Are you bringing The Beast in?’ his dad asked.

  ‘Yeah. On my way.’

  ‘Take it easy, then. Tom said she wasn’t handling too well.’

  ‘She seems to be handling just fine.’

  There was no logic to mobile reception in the area. A phone could be as clear as a bell in a deep, forested gully then useless on flat, cleared, open road. Matt would have thought the Old Barn on top of its hill was perfectly situated for good reception but he couldn’t get through to Jodie either. Not even to her message bank.

  Matt started up The Beast, the adrenaline still racing in his veins. His dad would never know how much Matt had needed to hear his voice. He smiled to himself. The old man would probably kick his arse if he told him. Then wrap a tanned, sinewy arm around his shoulders in his version of a parental hug and tell him to go find something to do. It was his dad’s solution when the going got tough. Find something to do until something better finds you.

  That was why Matt had come back to Bald Hill. Once he was off the crutches and the pain in his knee was manageable, all he’d had left to think about were the gunshots and the screaming. Seeing his cop mates had only made it worse. He didn’t want to talk about it or see anyone and he was going stir-crazy holed up in his house in Newcastle. When his dad said he could do with some more help at the garage, he’d meant a new junior but Matt had packed a bag and turned up anyway, taken up his old room with the bunk beds in the flat above the shop. And for eight weeks he’d been pumping petrol, driving the truck, cleaning and stocking the workshop and marking time until he found something better.

  Which was why he wasn’t unhappy about going out of his way to the Old Barn. The fact that Jodie Cramer was there was an added bonus.

  He hung a left at the T-junction at the end of Tom’s road and headed away from town. From memory, the turn-off to the barn was about five or ten kilometres further down the road. He hadn’t had a reason to come out this far since he’d been home. The flat, winding road looked like it hadn’t been resurfaced since the last time he’d been here.

  That was seven years ago. The same day he’d squared up to the Anderson brothers at the barn. Depressing how his first and last big cases had ended on a sour note. The first, he’d been sure it was the Andersons and hadn’t found the evidence to charge them. The last, he’d been sure that family would be safe and hadn’t been able to save them. For years, he’d kept track of Travis and Kane, as though knowing where they were would keep some other young kid safe. Now, six months after Somerset Street, he wasn’t sure he knew how to keep anyone safe.

  Matt raised a hand to a passing motorist, thought about the strangeness of seeing Kane Anderson last night, only to be heading out to the barn hours later. Stranger still that the arsehole had hit on Jodie, the person Matt was going to see. He shook his head. Coincidence, surely. Anderson wouldn’t know she was staying out there. What would be the point if he did? Jodie wasn’t a lonely runaway. And the barn wasn’t the derelict squat it used to be – isolated yes, but hardly useful now for the sadistic games the Andersons went in for. Christ, he couldn’t believe the place was a B & B.

  He turned onto the dirt track that led up to the barn, noted it was a little neater now for the nice city folk who wanted to visit. He took it slow up the incline, not wanting to damage the underside of the low-slung car, smiled at the sweet, guttural purr of the engine. He and Tom had lusted over that sound for hours in the old garage. Jesus, his brother would kill him if he wrote The Beast off. He changed back to first gear and gave it an extra couple of revs as he powered over the hump in the road. Up ahead, he saw the barn perched on its hill and a jolt of memory made him roll to a stop.

  Seven years ago when he’d gone up there with the search team, the Old Barn had been like a rotting wound on the countryside. There’d been rats’ nests and fleas had crawled all over the cops. It stank of putrid garbage and mould and soot from a fire that had burned up one wall. Probably not much worse than the house Travis and Kane had left, their father’s dump out on the Dungog road.

  That whole family had been a prison sentence waiting to happen. Bill Anderson had clocked up a couple of stretches before he was wiped out by a cattle truck. No great loss. He’d been a vicious drunk, a brawler, more likely to smack a man in the teeth or beat up a woman than say ‘G’day’. Taught Travis and Kane everything they knew. Just to prove it, Travis got kicked out of the army and Kane served time in Long Bay.

  Travis signed up for the military about a month after the search was called off. Matt had been promoted to detective by then and moved to Sydney but according to Dad, word was that Travis wanted to make a new start. Matt figured it was more than likely Anderson’s quickest way to get out from under police scrutiny. Three years later though, he was back as a person of interest, rounded up in a sting on a military weapons racket. From what Matt could find out, a stock of rifles had gone missing from training bases over an eighteen-month period. Nine personnel had been pulled in. Travis was one of three dishonourably discharged when there wasn’t enough evidence to charge them.

  Kane wasn’t so lucky. Matt had been working in Sydney for six months when his name popped up on the computer. What a crock that had been. Kane knifed a guy in a pub then got only two years because some idiot social worker claimed Travis’s absence had left him without a steadying influence, that he had anger issues because he’d suffered abuse at the hands of his father. It was the only favour Bill Anderson ever did his son.

  Matt sat in the idling car, looked at the new roof on the barn, the wide verandah, the garden, the decay traded for charm. If he’d had his way seven years ago, the place would have been torn down. Now it seemed the Old Barn was doing better than any of them. Go figure.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw something red move in the bush. It was off to the right, a few metres up the track. He eased the car forward, stopped beside a rock platform. It formed a natural clearing, five or so metres deep, bordered by native scrub except where the road ran past. And someone in a red top was crouched at the far end. He watched as the person stood up and faced him, felt one side of his mouth curl up as he wound his window down.

  ‘Hey, Jodie.’

  ‘Matt?’

  She said it like she wasn’t sure so he pushed his sunglasses up on his head and contemplated the way she was looking this morning. Great legs in trackpants, red top, a warmer one tied around her waist – and a baseball-sized rock she was gripping firmly in one hand.

  ‘You’re up early this morning. With all the wine I loaded in the car last night, I thought I’d have to wake you.’

  She studied him for a couple of seconds, moved the rock about in her hand. ‘Is that your car?’

  Matt hung an arm out the window and patted the chassis. ‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she? But no, it’s my brother’s. I’m driving it into town for him.’

  ‘Does he live around here?’

  He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. ‘About fifteen k’s that way. Just a hop, skip and a jump out here.’

  ‘Was he driving it last night?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Were you?’

  He tapped the window frame with his thumb while he tried to figure out where the conversation was heading. He’d hoped for a friendly chat with the cool girl at the B & B but it felt more like an interrogation. ‘No. Why?’

  She took another second, repositioned the rock in her hand again. ‘We heard a car like that driving around the hill in the night. Was it you? Or your brother?’

  Matt turned his head and looked out the windscreen at the barn on its hill. Yep, Jodie Cramer had a laugh that could knock a guy’s socks off and she could body-slug a hundred-kilo man. It was also possible she was a little paranoid. But, hey, who was he to criticise? He’d just considered wrapping himself around a tree. He turned back to her. ‘Okay, I admit it, my brother and I have been guilty of hitting on the occasional tourist in our younger days, but stalking,’ he shrugged, ‘it
’s never really been our style.’

  It took a moment for her to return his smile. ‘Yeah, sure. Sorry.’ She lifted the rock and held it on her palm like she was testing its weight.

  ‘So what’s with the rock?’ Matt asked.

  She cocked her head, watched him a moment, like she was deciding what to say. ‘Well, you see, I can hit a bullseye at ten metres with a baseball. It’s a very handy skill when you’re a PE teacher. Not much use for anything else, now that I don’t play baseball. But when I heard your car, I figured it might come in handy.’

  Her voice and words were casual, jokey, but she looked tense and she still gripped the rock. Maybe he was being optimistic but he decided casual was the one to go with.

  ‘Is that right? What were you planning?’

  She shrugged loosely. ‘I’d aim for the driver’s window. Not good for you, now that you’ve wound your window down.’

  His mouth curled up in a slow smile. He’d got it right. ‘Okay. Then what?’

  ‘I’d call the police.’

  ‘No mobile reception out here.’

  ‘There is at the bottom of the hill.’ She raised an eyebrow.

  He nodded, said, ‘So what if you miss?’

  She put one hand on her hip, tossed the rock up and caught it. ‘According to one of my students, who also happens to be a maths whiz, I have a ninety-four per cent success rate. I wouldn’t miss.’

  ‘I don’t want to underestimate you but it’s a rock. Heavier than a baseball, not perfectly round and I’m not ten metres away. Maybe you aren’t as accurate over five or six metres. And you’d be throwing under stress. You’d know you only had one shot. That can make a person miss. What then?’

  He saw his question pull her up. Her smile faltered for just a moment before she conceded with a shoulder shrug.

  ‘Okay, it’s possible I could miss. But I’m going to get damn close. I’d hit the car somewhere, make one hell of a noise, enough to give me a second or two while you worked out what happened. Then I’d run into the bush. You’d never catch me with that bad leg.’