She nodded.
More carefully than she would have expected, Carlin helped her up, slinging his arm around her back and gently guiding her to her feet. She cried out as she put weight on her left leg; it felt like it had been torn apart. She leaned against Carlin and step by tentative step he guided her out of her old room and into the hall, collecting a plastic bag as he did.
‘Your cash,’ he said. ‘You left a trail of it from your car. It rained last night, so most of it was washed away. Whatever I could find is in here. Speaking of which, I’ve moved the car to a different street, but if there’s anything you need in there, speak now or forever hold your peace.’
Maggie shook her head.
Together they moved down the stairs, Maggie biting back the yelps that threatened with every movement. It was slow, frustrating going but together they reached the landing.
‘Hang here for a sec,’ Carlin said, guiding Maggie to lean against the wall. ‘I’m gonna take a quick look and make sure the coast is clear.’ He let go of her and headed out the door. Maggie watched after him for a moment, then her eyes moved back to the stairs. In the light of day, the house was dusty and sparse. There had never been much in the way of furniture or decorations, but now it just looked a few steps from dilapidated. Not like the place where she had grown up. She had imagined coming back would fill her with horror and dread, that she’d sense her father over her shoulder or see him stalking the abandoned halls. But here, now, all she saw was an empty house.
‘We’re clear,’ Carlin said from the door. ‘Let’s go.’
Maggie didn’t look back.
Carlin drove an old black van, the back windows painted over. The reason became clear as he helped Maggie in; a mattress and a few ragged blankets had been piled inside. It smelt of stale cigarette smoke. Maggie lay back on the hard mattress, looking at the peeling upholstery on the roof as the van hummed to life around her.
‘I’ll try to drive gentle,’ Carlin said from the front, ‘but I wanna get clear of the city fast, so if there are any bad bumps, don’t let ’em kill you, fair?’
Maggie didn’t bother to reply. There was, she knew, a very real risk that this was as bad an idea as returning to Melbourne in the first place had been. But she was hardly overflowing with alternatives. Her options boiled down to jail, death or Carlin.
He drove without a word. In the dark back of the van, Maggie had no idea where they were and she wasn’t interested in prompting conversation by asking. As the first hour passed, she let herself fall into a light doze, occasionally jolted awake by a sudden stop or the jerk of a speed bump. Despite the renewed protests from her back and the fact that she could feel warm, fresh blood through Carlin’s makeshift bandages, she said nothing.
She hadn’t even realised she’d fallen asleep until the car stopped and her eyes flickered open. Her whole body felt stiff now, like it was going to protest even the smallest attempt to move. She sat up anyway as Carlin opened the side door. She smelled fresh air and gum trees. He helped her out onto soft grass.
In front of her was a weatherboard house in the middle of a small, overgrown field. Swaying gums became more frequent the further past the house she looked, until they were thick behind a barbed-wire fence. The forest sprawled across a backdrop of deep green hills beneath a light grey sky. She looked to the side. The view wasn’t much different. She took a deep breath. The air was cool and fresh. They were a long way from the city.
‘Home away from home,’ Carlin said, guiding her towards the front steps that led up to the porch.
‘Where are we?’
‘Just out of Warburton. A good hour clear of Melbourne.’
‘Were we followed?’
Carlin gave her a withering look. ‘Yeah, I noticed a couple of shady-looking pricks on the road behind us. They’re probably gonna roll up any minute now.’
As they neared the house she stopped; somebody was waiting on the front steps. A middle-aged woman in ripped jeans and a thick, green jumper. She had short, mousy hair; a cigarette in her mouth; a weathered, suspicious-looking face; and a large, fluffy, brown dog panting happily next to her.
‘Julie,’ Carlin said, by way of explanation. ‘You made great time.’
Julie took a long drag of her cigarette, dropped it on the bottom step and trod on it. ‘You didn’t.’ Her voice was hoarse. ‘Can’t wait around all fucking day to cater for you. Argos and I have places to be.’
Maggie looked at the dog. She couldn’t see its eyes through the shaggy fur. It didn’t seem much bothered by the wait.
Julie opened the door and walked through as Argos ran up to Carlin, who greeted him with a scratch behind the ears before helping Maggie up the stairs and into the house. It was plain inside, but homelier than Maggie expected. The scrubbed wood of the walls and rustic, slightly uneven homemade-looking chairs and tables put her in mind of an old hunter’s cabin, as did the mingled smell of wood smoke and eucalyptus.
‘Jack fancies himself a carpenter,’ Julie said. ‘Too bad he’s shit at it.’
Carlin took her into a side room, with only a narrow, single bed low to the ground and a table over which Julie went through a leather bag, taking out more bandages and several small bottles. Argos sat at the foot of the bed, watching as Carlin lowered Maggie down onto it.
‘Beer, Julie?’ Carlin asked.
‘Gin if you’ve got it. Just the one for now, but I’ll thank you for a few more glasses once the girl’s stuck back together.’
‘On it.’ Carlin departed, leaving Maggie alone with Julie. She wasn’t sure what to say so she said nothing.
Julie turned to her. ‘First things first, I’m gonna have to see the damage. What you’ve done to yourself and what I can do to fix it. If I can do anything.’
‘Are you a doctor?’
‘Vet,’ Julie said. ‘Now, take off that bandage; I’m getting an infection just looking at it.’
Maggie obeyed, wincing as the dried blood tugged at her wound. She tried not to look at the rags as she threw them aside. They were mostly red and black.
Julie leaned over to examine her back. She gave no audible reaction. ‘Cleaning and stitching. Figured as much. I’ll see to that first and then we can work out what’s broken.’ She returned to her table and set about preparing a syringe that made Maggie flinch. ‘Gonna stick you with this first,’ she said. ‘Won’t stop the pain, but’ll make it a bit easier to deal with. Machete?’
Maggie was too tired to ask how the hell Julie knew that. She nodded.
‘Hold still now.’
Something about Julie put Maggie close to at ease. Maybe it was the fact that she showed no interest whatsoever in putting Maggie at ease.
Carlin returned with a beer in his hand and a gin for Julie, which she ignored as she started stitching up Maggie’s back. Carlin remained in the doorway, watching and drinking without a word. For her part, Maggie kept her face impassive even as it felt like she was being flayed.
When Julie was done, she crouched in front of Maggie and took a hold of her leg. She looked up. ‘This could hurt.’
Maggie nodded.
Firmly, Julie felt one then the other. Maggie clenched her teeth as she checked the left.
‘Could be a crack in the bone here,’ Julie said. ‘Hard to tell without an X-ray or anything, but it doesn’t need setting. That said, I wouldn’t be running anywhere for a while.’
‘You might struggle to stop her,’ Carlin said, finishing his beer. ‘The girl took a machete in the back rather than stay put in Melbourne.’
‘If she doesn’t want to be in a world of pain, she’ll stay put here.’ Julie straightened up, surveying Maggie with crossed arms. Argos plodded over and placed his chin on Maggie’s knee.
‘How’s the head?’ Julie asked.
‘Hurts, but not as bad as the rest of me.’
‘Avoided a concussion then,’ Julie said. ‘You slept through the night and you’re not dead, so I’d say that’s alright. But yeah, you’ve lost p
lenty of blood and you’ve taken a royal fuck of a beating. So don’t do anything stupid. Or do, but I’m not a fan of seeing my handiwork put to waste.’
‘Doctor’s orders,’ Carlin said.
‘Shut the fuck up, Jack,’ Julie said.
‘Thank you,’ Maggie said.
Julie took her gin from Jack and knocked it back. ‘Now I’m owed a few more of these, and you,’ she nodded at Maggie, ‘need some rest. No escape attempts.’
Maggie weakly saluted, then lay back. The bed creaked as Argos jumped up and lay next to her, head resting on her shoulder. Julie paused in the door for a moment. ‘Argos likes you. That’s usually a good sign.’
She left. Maggie looked down at the shaggy dog. She got halfway through scratching him behind the ears before sleep claimed her with a vengeance.
Days passed. Or maybe they didn’t. It was hard to tell. Maggie drifted in and out of sleep. Sometimes it was day; sometimes it wasn’t. At first, she only left the room to use the bathroom and eat. Food was always out of a can, something Carlin heated up or left for her when he wasn’t around, which was most of the time.
She couldn’t have run if she had wanted to. Whatever had seen her through the night at the motel was thoroughly depleted. It didn’t matter how long she slept, she remained tired and sore. So she lay in bed or read one of the three books Carlin left for her. All she had to wear were old clothes of his and some cheap basics he’d picked up from a supermarket somewhere. The clothes were far too big, but at least not covered in blood. Carlin made only the briefest of appearances, and when he did he had nothing to report about the hard drive, her father, the bikies or the police.
When she felt almost well enough, she took a faltering walk outside. The house was even more buried in the bush than she’d first realised; trees closed in all around it from every direction, the only gap being the narrow dirt road they’d presumably driven in on. Maggie would sit on the front stairs, watching the dark opening in the trees, waiting for Carlin, the police or Townsend’s men to come trundling through. Good luck to her if it was the latter; Carlin had left nothing around the house that could be used as a weapon, unless she planned on taking on her assailants with a spoon.
Using a stick for support, she started doing wider and wider rounds of the house, bringing herself right up to the edge of the trees. She would look through them as if for a stalker or watcher, but she knew there was no-one. That feeling that had persisted on the streets of Port Douglas had not reappeared. What she felt here was the opposite: an almost eerie lack of humanity. She didn’t mind it. There was something peaceful about it, although that sense easily slipped away when she thought about the circumstances that had led her here.
Working out her next move would be a challenge. Her car had been left back near her father’s and she had no idea whether the police had found it. All she had here was the handfuls of notes she had salvaged from the motel. It would be enough to get her away from Melbourne, but not much more than that. Without a car, she didn’t have mobility, and without a weapon, her chances of survival crept too close to zero for her liking. As much as the fact made her feel unwell, she had to at least partly rely on Jack Carlin.
It had been about a week, she thought, when Carlin came home early. This time Maggie was up and waiting at the small kitchen table, sipping one of his beers. Carlin nodded to her and got his own.
‘Well, you’ve made a right fucking mess of things.’ He joined her at the table and cracked his beer. ‘You’ve also handed Olivia Dean her warrant on a silver platter. I didn’t find anything in the storage unit, but then I didn’t have much of a chance to look before Dean and her crew arrived wielding signatures.’
Maggie sipped her drink. If the hard drive wasn’t in the storage unit or the empty house then there was only one place she could think of that it might have ended up, but that place made far less sense than the others.
‘Cooper’s alive, by the way,’ Carlin said. ‘So is the lawyer, although her signing days are probably over.’ His expression turned briefly amused. ‘But, predictably, she’s sticking to the story the Scorpions gave her.’
‘Surely the police know that story’s fucking stupid,’ Maggie said. ‘Darch called them.’
‘And said you had attacked her. Not the Scorpions, who are probably claiming to be good Samaritans who stepped in and tried to stop the lawyer’s de-fingering. The police know that’s bullshit, but what can they do? Two bikies are dead and the lawyer’s missing a finger. All remaining fingers are pointing at you. Rook’s playing the outraged patriarch card, demanding the police bring you to justice. Without Darch’s testimony incriminating the Scorpions, the police can’t do much except lob those illegal firearm charges around. Which still, I guess, adds fuel to the fire of Olivia’s crusade.’ For a moment, Carlin looked deeply bitter.
‘You don’t want her to bring down the Scorpions?’
‘I want the Scorpions burned off the face of the planet,’ Carlin said. ‘I just wish I could be the one to do it.’
‘Why?’
‘Long story that I’m not itching to tell.’
Maggie drank, thinking. ‘My father was involved with them. Cooper is as well. Were you?’
A heavy silence hung over the room.
‘That,’ Carlin said, ‘is the kind of question that any cop would rightfully get pissed off by.’
‘Except you’re not a cop.’
‘They can take the badge but that doesn’t take why you wore it.’
‘But they did take the badge. Because you were crooked?’
Carlin’s smile curled a little too far to be genuine. ‘Ask Harrison Cooper why they took my badge.’
‘But I can ask you.’
‘You can ask. Doesn’t mean you’re gonna get an answer.’ He leaned forward. ‘Ancient history doesn’t change your circumstances, girl.’
‘No,’ Maggie admitted. ‘But it might explain my circumstances.’
Neither spoke. Carlin drank. Maggie gave him a moment but it was clear he didn’t plan on saying any more.
‘What’s happened to Cooper?’ she asked.
‘He’s in trouble, of course,’ Carlin said. ‘But not because of the bikies. Because of bringing you back to Melbourne. I’m hearing he’s trying to claim he was going to arrest you, but that holds about as much water as a net. Dunno how he plans to worm his way out of this.’
This isn’t what you think. When Cooper had said that, Maggie had been too angry and blinkered to consider what it meant. Now, she wondered if it was in fact a missing puzzle piece.
‘So what now?’ Maggie said.
‘Now, I’m gonna really hope you have some other idea about where that hard drive might be.’
To her surprise, she almost wanted to share her vague theory. It wasn’t that she liked Carlin, exactly, but for all the posturing and threats, he had protected her. Maybe Carlin would at least let her take the information that pertained to her mother before he did whatever he wanted with the rest. Maybe. But she still didn’t truly know what kind of person Carlin was or what he would do once he had the hard drive.
Maggie shook her head.
Carlin drank. ‘Square one again, then.’
Julie returned on what Maggie estimated to be her tenth day at the house. She was sitting on the porch, reading, when she heard the approaching car. She felt a low buzz of unease when she didn’t recognise Carlin’s van, but relaxed upon seeing Julie’s face through the windscreen of the Jeep, the panting shape of Argos next to her.
The dog bounded around them, chasing flies as they walked the fences and Julie asked gruff, routine questions about how Maggie was feeling. The answers seemed to please her; the tiredness and lingering pain were still very present, but Maggie was walking without the stick now and able to sleep through the night despite her back.
‘You’ll have a scar,’ Julie said. ‘But then, it won’t be the first. I saw your leg. Dog bite?’
‘Something like that.’ Maggie watched a rosella j
ump from branch to branch, calling out as it did.
‘Some dogs shouldn’t be underestimated,’ Julie said. ‘People reckon they’ve got ’em tamed then all it takes is the wrong move and those animal instincts come flooding back.’
‘This dog was trained to do exactly what it did.’
‘That’s worse,’ Julie said. ‘Some piece of shit beats an animal until it attacks because it can’t do anything else.’ She nodded to Argos, now sniffing around the fence line. ‘That’s what happened to him. But he’s a gentle thing. Abused like you wouldn’t believe, skinny and mangy and scarred when I got him out. Never bit or attacked, though. People mistake that for him being cowed and broken, but I dunno. I think that takes a different kind of strength. Most people he just ignores. Always feels worth noting when he doesn’t.’
For a few minutes, they walked in silence.
‘Jack and me grew up out here,’ Julie said. ‘We both had bastard parents so we kind of gravitated towards each other.’ She glanced sideways at Maggie. ‘He used to talk about wanting peace and quiet, wanting to settle down eventually. When he got this place, I thought he finally might. But some people can’t keep themselves away from the fight. They see a situation going sour and they dive on in, consequences be damned. Maybe not because they want to but because they need to. Because maybe they think it’ll fix some broken part of themselves.’ She shrugged. ‘Or maybe I’m talking out of my arse. I’m not a shrink. Anyway, that’s why I help him out when he needs it. I don’t wanna know the specifics; plausible deniability is the sweet spot when it comes to Jack Carlin. But I still trust that by and large, he’s doing the right thing. And besides, Argos likes him.’
Maggie glanced up at the sky. Lazy clouds drifted around a high sun.
‘Argos is a dog,’ Maggie said. ‘And a dog who’s had a shit time of it. I’m not sure I’d swear by his judgement.’
‘I’m not swearing by anything,’ Julie said. ‘I’m saying that dogs are a lot simpler than us. They know how to recognise what’s inherently bad. They’ll attack or stay away from the things that are more likely to hurt them.’
The Inheritance Page 11