Perhaps he wasn’t seeing them, thought Mike. Who knows what Lance saw.
The siren screamed, the police officers kept glancing round, as though they expected Lance to try to murder them or Mike, the police wheels pounded on the broken bitumen as though they were chanting deep into Mike’s brain:
Which one is guilty,
Which of us three,
Mr Loosley or Loser or me …
At Gunyabah police station they’d taken Lance away. Mike had caught a glimpse of Mrs Loosley, her face carved with desperation, frantically running up from the car park, before the police took him to an interview room.
Mr Loosley had still been out searching for Lance with Constable Svenic. With the small part of his mind that could still think at all, Mike was glad that Mr Loosley hadn’t arrived at Gunyabah police station yet. He couldn’t have faced Mr Loosley.
We are all guilty,
Each of us three,
Mr Loosley and Loser and me …
They’d given Mike a cup of tea in the interview room, and one of the constables had gone out and bought him a hamburger, but he couldn’t eat it. Mum had arrived, all shaking and with her hair in a mess, and he’d told his story into a tape recorder, and then read it and signed it when the police sergeant typed it out. He’d tried to tell them it wasn’t just Lance’s fault. It was everyone’s fault, but the words wouldn’t come.
‘You’re quite a hero, son,’ said the police sergeant, as he finally escorted them out the door.
Mike shook his head. He was no hero. Lance was no villain. Jazz could explain it all to them, he thought vaguely. Jazz would know the words.
‘What’s going to happen to him?’ whispered Jazz from her pillow.
‘Lance? I don’t know. They say he’s sick, mentally sick — that’s what the counsellor told us. I don’t know if he’ll go to prison, or a sort of prison hospital. But I don’t think they’ll let him go home.’ Mike hesitated. ‘I don’t think he’ll want to go home.’
Outside the police station Mum had hugged him for a long time before she’d been able to drive. Dad had been waiting at the house, a look on his face that Mike had never seen before. Things had been … different … with Dad since then.
‘The people from the Department of Health finally turned up,’ said Mike. ‘Just as it was all over. They wore these respirators and everything Budgie said, but I missed it all.’
Jazz didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed, the lashes very black against the milky brown of her face, the pillow a hard white against her hair. She must be asleep again, thought Mike. It was time to go.
He stood up, hesitated, then pressed her hand — the one without the needle. Her fingers closed round his, slowly but firmly. Mike sat down again, his hand still in hers. The sounds of the hospital washed over him: the clink of a trolley in the corridor, a far off beeping, the magpies gurgling outside.
‘Mum can’t get over how kind everyone’s been,’ whispered Jazz finally. ‘How everyone helped in the emergency. She said she’s never seen anything like it. She’s talking about staying here. Dad wants to stay too.’
Happiness began to soak through Mike, warm as the sunlight. But he just said, ‘That’s good.’
‘Shouldn’t be too hard,’ said Jazz sleepily. ‘Not with the shortage of doctors out here. Mike?’
‘Mmmm?’
‘Will you take me fishing when I get out of here? To that place on the farm you told me about? Mum says I’ll be out in a few days.’
‘Sure,’ said Mike. He supposed he’d be spending lots more time out at the farm with Dad now, anyway.
Suddenly it was extraordinarily good to be alive. Everything looked clearer, brighter, than he had ever seen it. Even the old pepper tree through the crack in the curtains seemed dipped in gold. Was that what happened when you faced death, Mike wondered. Suddenly you saw life as well?
He smiled, and let the sunlight seep through him as he sat there, holding Jazz’s hand.
In the Blood
The body was lying by my gate, half curled around the post as thought for comfort.
I tried to find a pulse. The blood smeared on my fingers. ‘He sucked at my neck,’ she whispered. ‘He said he’d drain me dry.’
Exiled from the City, virtual engineer Danielle Forest hunts a killer in a world of scattered utopias and genetically engineered human-animal crosses. Danielle needs help and finds it in the most unlikely shape of Neil, a member of the local farming community.
Who — or what — committed murder? Was it a psychotic? A genetic modification gone wrong? Or are the ancient vampire legends based on fact?
In the Blood is an enthralling thriller and love story. It is also a vampire story with a difference!
ISBN: 0 207 19779 2
Hitler’s Daughter
The bombs were falling, the smoke was rising from the concentration camps, but all Hitler’s daughter knew was the world of lessons with Fraulein Gelber, and the hedgehogs she rescued from the cold.
Was it just a story? Did Hitler’s daughter really exist? If you were Hitler’s daughter, would it all be your fault too? Was it all so long ago it didn’t matter … or did Mark have to face the same questions …?
Another enthralling historical novel from the author of Daughter of the Regiment, Soldier on the Hill and Somewhere Around the Corner.
“… a tribute to the power of the storyteller …”
The Age
“… beautifully simple to read … a believable and compelling story.”
Sydney Morning Herald
ISBN: 0 207 19801 2
About the Author
Jackie French’s writing career spans ten years, 32 wombats, 80 books for kids and adults, seven languages, various awards, assorted ‘Burke’s Backyard’ segments in a variety of disguises, radio shows, newspaper and magazine columns, theories of pest and weed ecology and 27 shredded back doormats. The doormats are the victims of the wombats who require constant appeasement in the form of carrots, rolled oats and wombat nuts, which is one of the reasons for her prolific output: it pays the carrot bills.
Her critically acclaimed book, Hitler’s Daughter, won the Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Award for Younger Readers in 2000.
For more information on Jackie French, her
wombats and her books, zap onto her website:
www.jackiefrench.com
Other books by Jackie French
Fiction
The Roo that Won the Melbourne Cup • Rain Stones
Walking the Boundaries • The Boy Who Had Wings
Somewhere Around the Corner
Annie’s Pouch • Alien Games • The Secret Beach
Mermaids • Mind’s Eye • A Wombat Named Bosco
Summerland • Beyond the Boundaries
The Warrior — the Story of a Wombat
The Book of Unicorns • Dancing with Ben Hall
Soldier on the Hill • Daughter of the Regiment
Stories to Eat with a Banana • Tajore Arkle
Hitler’s Daughter • In the Blood
Missing You, Love Sara
Stories to Eat with a Watermelon • Lady Dance
Stories to Eat with a Blood Plum
How the Finnegans Saved the Ship
Non-fictcion
How the Aliens from Alpha Centauri Invaded My
Maths Class and Turned Me Into a Writer …
How to Guzzle Your Garden • Book of Challenges
Stamp Stomp Whomp & Other Interesting Ways to
Get Rid of Pests
Seasons of Content • The Best of Jackie French
Earthly Delights • The Fascinating History of your Lunch
Visit Jackie’s website
www.jackiefrench.com
Copyright
Angus&Robertson
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia
First published in Australia in 2001
This edition published in 2013
by HarperCollinsPublisher
s Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
A member of the HarperCollinsPublishers (Australia) Pty Limited Group
www.harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Jackie French 2001
The right of Jackie French to be identified as the moral rights author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000 (Cth).
This book is copyright.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.
Inquiries should be addressed to the publishers.
HarperCollinsPublishers
HarperCollinsPublishers
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10 East 53rd Street, New York NY 10022, USA
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-publication data:
French, Jackie.
Dark wind blowing.
ISBN 978 0 2071 9796 3(pbk).
ISBN 978 1 4607 0168 3(epub)
1. Bullying – Juvenile fiction. I. Title.
A823.3
Dark Wind Blowing Page 9