Shoot Through

by J. M. Green

  She wasn’t exaggerating. Our once fearless, impartial public broadcaster had been brought low by cowardly ideologues with red pens.

  ‘So, you’ll look into it?’

  ‘I’ll take a little peek, yes.’

  ‘Bunny, there’s another possible angle to try. There’s a cop in Mount Isa, Detective Sergeant Jason Costa of the rural crimes division, or whatever it’s called. He won’t talk to me, but maybe he’ll talk to you. Put on your pink Akubra.’

  ‘ABC wardrobe,’ Bunny said dryly. ‘It’s not mine.’

  ‘Ask him about stock missing from cattle stations up his way. It might be related.’

  I ended the call and stood at the window. A couple of teenage boys were sweeping the leaflets into bags and loading them onto a truck. They had some environmental insignia on their shirts. Environmental volunteers, usually planting trees or cleaning the plastic bags out of rivers. Here they were, diverted to fixing McHugh’s disaster.

  The ‘hooker’ music tore me away from the window. Phuong.

  ‘Hey,’ I sighed, exhaling the word.

  ‘Your brother’s broken out from prison.’

  Fuck! ‘Ben? As if.’

  ‘It’s on all the bulletins. It’s not roadblocks yet, but they’re looking for him.’

  ‘Good. I hope they find him. Menace to society, that bloke.’

  ‘They think he had help, and that he travelled north in an old truck.’

  Fuck! ‘Oh, right. Okay, I’ll look out for him.’

  ‘You in Woolburn at the moment?’ she asked me.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good,’ Phuong said. ‘I’m nearly there, just drove through Horsham. Mount Arapiles can wait till tomorrow.’

  Fuck! ‘Great. See you soon.’

  The phone pinged, a text floated up. Brophy: 20 mins away. Heart emoji.

  A mute TV was on in the public bar, tuned to the local news channel.

  I wanted a drink, a beer perhaps, or a bottle of scotch. But I needed to stay alert, so I negotiated with the barmaid for a special lunch of vegetables, which wasn’t on the menu, and ordered a lemon squash. I felt like a condemned woman, and this was my last meal. The tension was almost unbearable. I took my soft drink to a table and watched a couple of labourers play pool.

  My phone. Number unknown. I smoothed an eyebrow, straightened my spine, swiped, announced myself.

  ‘Verity Savage. I’m calling regarding an email offering information on a rort involving cattle? Am I speaking to that Stella Hardy?’

  I turned my back on the room and hunched. ‘Yes. I’m that Stella Hardy,’ I whispered.

  ‘Right. What’s the story? A conspiracy or something?’

  ‘A conspiracy, yes. One involving Allyson Coleman.’

  ‘Go on.’

  If I gave her what I had, even a fraction of what I had, she’d take it and go. I’d never get anything out of her. I decided to act paranoid and make her earn my trust. An experienced journalist knew to cultivate a nervous source. And for me, it wasn’t hard to act skittish. People genuinely wanted me dead. ‘Not so fast. I don’t want to say anything on the phone.’

  Pause. ‘Are you in Melbourne?’

  ‘I can be in Melbourne tomorrow.’

  ‘Let’s meet at the Jar Jar Drinks Café in Camberwell. Do you know it?’

  Marcus Pugh’s favourite eatery. ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘See you there at four.’

  There was a story on the TV about the aftermath of the fire. The woman behind the bar turned up the volume. Sheds, fences, and livestock had been lost, but fortunately no one had died. Someone said, ‘Fuck the greenies.’ And people nodded. There was a general agreement that the greenies had prevented a sensible program of preventative burn-offs.

  The next story showed vision of the usually dry salt lakes in the Mallee now filled with rain to make an expanse of muddy slush. Police in uniform walked around the lake. A screen had been erected at the water’s edge. A police officer took photographs.

  ‘A quiet community has been rocked by the discovery of a body in the Murray-Sunset National Park just off the Mallee Highway, near Underbool.’

  Cut to the reporter speaking to a couple of hikers. They were positioned in front of a sign that said Lake Hardy.

  ‘We’d just completed the walk around the perimeter when we saw this pair of legs,’ said the first hiker.

  ‘Yeah, one leg was in a moon boot,’ said the other hiker. ‘We had to walk all the way around again before we got network coverage. Then we called the police.’

  The reporter turned back to the viewer. ‘Police are investigating. Jim?’

  Back in the studio, the presenter paused for a moment to be concerned, then he read the next story.

  ‘Kelton McHugh has denied that thousands of his electoral materials were found in the streets of Woolburn.’

  Cut to shots of the volunteers sweeping up leaflets. Next, the post office man had a microphone in front of him. ‘Kelton McHugh is a terrific local member.’

  Back to the studio. Next item: a photo of Ben with the caption Escapee. The tradies laughed. The woman behind the bar brought out a plate of mashed potato, gravy, and carrot coins and said, ‘That’s your Benjamin, isn’t it?’

  The woman was a friend of my mother. If word got back to Delia, we’d never hear the end of it ‘No,’ I said, rapidly spooning potato into my mouth.

  A prisoner had escaped from a prison farm in central Victoria. Voice over: ‘While escaped prisoner Benjamin Hardy is not considered dangerous, the public is advised not to approach him, but to call police.’

  ‘It is him,’ said one of the tradies, a boy of about twenty. ‘It’s your fuckhead brother.’

  I did not recognise him, but sadly my family were well-known around here, and my face was easily recognised as a Hardy. The woman behind the bar glared at me, and then shook her head. Delia to hear of it in three, two, one …

  I lowered the spoon and took my drink to a table near the dartboard, secretly hoping a dart might take me out.

  The weather was presented by a young woman with a broad smile. What was she so happy about? Hottest autumn on record?

  ‘Spectacular sunsets,’ she said. ‘Back to you.’

  The three tradies, the woman behind the bar, and I all turned our faces to the TV, waiting to see what would come on next. To my surprise, it was a journalist interviewing both Marcus Pugh and Merri Phelan on the subject of youth incarceration.

  ‘Miss Phelan,’ Pugh said in his imperious way. ‘You know the prison system as well as me. You know very well that the department has excellent oversight of the private contracts, and that they meet all key performance indicators. You can leave the conspiracy theories to the lunatic fringe.’

  The interviewer raised her eyebrows. ‘Except for in the case of the death of Joe Phelan.’

  Cut to a shot of Merri Phelan. ‘I’m not interested in conspiracy theories, Marcus. These are the facts.’

  ‘You don’t think BS12 is covering something up?’ asked the interviewer.

  ‘If the inquiry finds that negligence was involved in the death of my brother, we’ll take legal action. But that does not constitute a conspiracy.’

  Pugh was nodding. ‘Good. Because the people running our state’s prisons are executives in a multi-national company. With contracts around the western world worth hundreds of millions of dollars. You don’t get to be the biggest and the best by cutting corners.’

  The interviewer turned to Merri. ‘Sorry, Marcus, but I don’t think that business executives are automatically superior, or in any way constitute the moral champions of our age.’

  ‘Boring,’ said one of the tradies as he manoeuvred balls into the triangle on the pool table.

  The woman behind the counter pulled a beer, took the change, put it in the till. She then reached for th
e remote.

  ‘Please don’t change it,’ I said.

  The tradie made a sharp jab of the pool cue onto the white ball, it slammed into the coloured balls, dispersing them across the table. ‘Boring.’

  She raised the remote and changed the channel.

  ‘Leave it!’ I screamed.

  ‘Let her watch it. Seems important to her.’

  He was indignant. ‘Fucking loopy, the whole family are.’

  ‘Language,’ she said.

  I put my palms together. ‘Please change it back.’

  She paused, then raised the remote again.

  Merri was talking about a teenager who was assaulted in prison by an adult inmate then placed in a suicide unit because of overcrowding in the juvenile wing of an adult prison.

  ‘Miss Phelan, there is no need for your exaggerated histrionics.’

  The young man dropped his pool cue, snatched the remote off the bar, and flicked it over. Infidelity Island came on. He danced around the room holding the remote above his head, like the conch.

  I finished my lemon squash and went out.

  The day was clear and bright. I sat on a bench in front of the pub and closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them, Brophy’s van shuddered to a halt on the street in front of me.

  32

  ‘THE VAN made it,’ I said.

  Brophy rubbed his neck and moved his head from side to side. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You alright?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Marigold hugged me around the waist the way Loretta did, with an intensity that was a little desperate, almost fearful.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Sick of the van,’ she said. ‘I hate long drives. My stomach feels bad. But Dad’s grumpy, and he won’t buy me a Coke.’

  She’d dropped her usual American manner of speaking, and the bogus swagger that went with it, and appeared to have passed into a new phase, the miserable teenager.

  ‘I bought you chips,’ he said. ‘And ice cream.’

  ‘Lucky you,’ I said.

  She effected a long, slow eye roll with only the whites visible. It was quite disturbing.

  ‘Why aren’t you at the farm? Dad told me we were going to a farm. And now we’re not.’

  ‘We can go there, if you want. It’s not far.’

  Brophy groaned. ‘We both need a break from driving,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for a walk. Stella, show us the Woolburn sights.’

  I didn’t want to let on to Brophy that I was in any danger. So I led the way and we walked out in the open, down the main street. I was thinking how tired he looked. And at the top of his shirt, his collar bones jutted through the skin, and a couple of ribs showed. His skin was a shade of ashen.

  ‘Your town is weird,’ Marigold said.

  Brophy looked at his phone. ‘No network.’

  ‘Let’s go to the pub,’ I said. ‘I’ll get in touch with Kylie. If she’s home, maybe we can visit the farm this afternoon.’

  Marigold made a scrunched-up face. Pubs, she knew, were boring places for kids.

  ‘I’ll buy you both a Coke,’ I said, then instantly remembered that Brophy had forbidden it.

  Our eyes met. I cringed with remorse. He turned away. Oh boy, did I regret it. It didn’t matter that I’d tried to lift Marigold’s mood and make her less difficult, not only for my sake, but also for his. I’d stumbled into an area full of landmines: the real parent doing the hard parenting, and the step-parent, or ring-in, or whatever I was, trying to be helpful and liked, and therefore breaking rules and creating all sorts of unintended confusion and conflict.

  He was walking ahead of us, towards the pub. No discussion, just cold fury radiating from him. This was one of those watershed moments in our life together, I felt it in my bones. His first visit to my hometown, meeting my family. It was supposed to be our romantic weekend away, the one I had planned and longed for, for so long. This was it. Yet it was this mess, me floundering, his coldness, my heartbreak, this heavy sense of failure.

  I trudged behind him, seeing our recent past clearly for the first time. I’d been preoccupied. Those times we were together, we rarely really talked. He’d visit, but rarely stayed over. We’d watch a screen, then go our separate ways.

  I didn’t need to ask him if he was using. He probably was. Of course he was. And it didn’t matter. Because he didn’t care anymore. And he couldn’t hide it.

  Brophy had reached the veranda and was waiting for Marigold and me to catch up to him before going in. Our eyes met again. It was over.

  We both knew it.

  We took turns playing pool against each other. When it was Brophy and I, we played in silence. Marigold climbed up on a bar stool, dangling her legs and calling out helpful instructions. Urging us on to the mystery of those odd angles where balls would connect in just the right spot and shoot into a pocket. That was the theory. The reality was a desultory back and forth in which we both either missed or made half-hearted shots that sent the ball rolling slowly across the soiled green felt only to fall far short.

  Between shots, Brophy stood with his legs apart, with the cue resting on the ground between them, holding a point in two hands, close to his chest. He had a frozen, inscrutable expression on his grey face. He made some effort to smile from time to time, but the atmosphere was thick with unease. If I asked him straight out if he was using again, it was possible he would give me an honest answer. Did I want it said out loud? What would be the point of that?

  I brooded over these thoughts, playing the worst pool of my life, until Phuong walked into the bar.

  She wore skinny jeans and a black t-shirt, and her hair was still salon-perfect. The pixie cut accentuated her long neck and the flawless symmetry of her head. A few locals did double takes. It wasn’t often someone so extraordinary entered their out-of-the-way establishment. Long legs, high-definition arm-muscles, angular cheekbones. On me, these structures were hidden under layers of cheese pizza. Against the backdrop of the public bar, with the framed photos of sporting history, postcards, foreign currency, and memorabilia on the wall, the contrast of Phuong’s presence raised the glamour levels to dizzying, like a celebrity photo shoot in a derelict location. In years to come, strangers would make pilgrimage to this site, take selfies at the spot where she now stood.

  She and Brophy greeted each other with a wary nod.

  ‘Just going to have a quick word. We’ll be back in a sec,’ I said to Brophy. ‘Marigold, you take over from me.’

  She jumped down from the stool and gripped the cue with ferocious glee.

  Phuong and I went up the stairs to my room. I fumbled the key in my haste.

  ‘Stella —’

  ‘Wait till we get inside,’ I said, still fumbling.

  Phuong turned the handle and swung the door wide. The bedding had been stripped, the mattress lifted up propped against the wall, pillowcases were off the pillows, and the rug was in a heap in the corner. The drawers of the dresser were open.

  ‘You are a woman of trashy habits, Stella Hardy,’ Phuong said.

  ‘Habits, mind, all trashy. Give me a hand to get this mattress back on the bed.’

  Phuong did most of the lifting, I helped guide it into place. Then we both sat on it.

  ‘Well, Stella. Are you going to tell me what they were looking for?’

  This is it, I thought, I’m going to tell her everything.

  A knock on the door. She gave me a quizzical frown. I shrugged and opened it.

  ‘Fresh towels?’ It was Freya.

  ‘No, thanks.’

  She glanced in at the room, paused for a moment, looked puzzled. ‘Fresh sheets, then?’

  ‘No, I’ll fix this up. Don’t you worry about it.’

  She turned to go.

  ‘Wait a second, Freya,’ I said. ‘I’ll have my phone b
ack now, if that’s okay.’

  ‘Oh, sure. I’ll go get it now.’

  Phuong raised her eyebrows. ‘What phone is that?’

  ‘The phone. The one the person who turned over my room was looking for. The one that Marcus Pugh and the rest of them are so paranoid about.’

  She moved her head a quarter-turn to the window and was quiet for a moment. ‘Stella —’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘This is all very —’

  ‘I know.’

  She stared out through the milky window at the blue Wimmera sky. ‘I’ve been thinking,’ she said, finally, ‘I owe you.’

  ‘What? No, you don’t.’

  ‘Shut up and let me say this.’ She faced me. ‘It’s precious to me, our long history, and the many times we stretched the limits of legality together.’ She smiled. ‘Remember when we broke into that meth lab in Diggers Rest together?’

  Of course I remembered. We’d found my young neighbour in there, dead. The trauma still haunted my nightmares. Gore didn’t affect Phuong, she was a professional. But she had made many concessions for me, and there’d been many lapses of that professionalism over the years. I understood the sentiment. ‘Yes, you wore your breaking-in outfit.’

  She laughed. ‘That black tracksuit? A breaking-in outfit?’

  ‘My God, yes. Very sleek. Very Diana Rigg in The Avengers.’

  She blinked. Sometimes my pop-culture references were too obscure even for Phuong. ‘I’ve aided and abetted you,’ she said with a smile. ‘And Stella, you’ve done the same for me. Every time I needed you, you were there. Even when you had to go against your better judgement.’

  ‘If you mean the time I helped your ex-boyfriend, then don’t mention it. It all worked out for the best.’ The best being that they broke up. He was an utter bastard.

  ‘So in that light of loyalty and history …’

  ‘Phuong, what is it? Are you okay?’

  ‘I … have … er … lost the DNA evidence from the Sunshine dope-house crime scene.’

  ‘You lost the hair they found?’

  She nodded.

  In my frantic life, the living in fear, the panic, and the calculating, I sometimes forgot that there are good things in this world. That a friend was a wonderful force for good. All it took for friendship to work its power was a simple phone call, or a hand on your shoulder, or the destruction of incriminating evidence.