It was a goanna: three foot long, as fat as a fencer's forearm and nearly as burnt. The sense of foreboding tightened its grip on my chest. What on earth would have made the Moonlight mob leave a prize like this for the scavengers?
Cutting across to Hazel's camp I went past the radio, and decided to put in a quick call to base, in case she'd left a message.
I picked up the mike, but it came away in my hand, the dead leads flopping against my arm. I went to stick them back, but the back plate had been smashed in.
Jesus, I thought, this is seriously weird. Where the fuck is everybody? Has there been an accident? I began to walk towards their shack, and as I drew closer I heard a noise - the creak of metal Springs, then a grunt, then another grunt - from within.
I stopped.
Who was shagging who?
Whoever it was and whatever they were up to, they'd made a bloody mess. The shack looked like it had been hit by a whirlwind. Canvases upended on the veranda, paint pots and bottles scattered about, lengths of string - the remains of a wind- chime - blew across the dirt.
'Hello!' I yelled.
No answer.
'Hazel?'
Silence.
I paused in the doorway, my shadow dancing on hessian. Then, with metaphorical kite-hawks tearing at my own heart, I stepped inside.
A gloomy tableau slowly assembled itself in the semi-darkness: dirty cups and saucepans on the bench, a slab of grey meat on the table, an old spring bed. Huge flies crashed against the ceiling. I could smell the fear, and it wasn't all my own.
'Hello?' I whispered, more in an effort to calm myself than in any hope of getting an answer.
A flurry of wind blew the hessian a little further to one side, a beam of light cut across the murk. Landed squarely upon a pair of eyes, staring up from the bed. Bright, possum eyes. Dead eyes. And an open mouth, the teeth a row of riddled fence posts, the tongue blue.
Jimmy Lively.
A movement in the darkness on the far side of the bed caught my attention. Something black and shaggy arose from the upper body. What the fuck was that? For one horrible moment I thought it was a rat, chewing at Jangala's neck.
Another movement and it revealed itself as the shock of hair on top of a wild, hairy head. I would have preferred the rat.
'Jesus!' I exclaimed. But it wasn't Jesus.
It was Blakie.
He took a hand away from Jangala's neck and put it across his eyes, peering up into the dazzling light from the doorway. His knuckles were smeared with blood.
He emitted a low, crackling growl and climbed to his feet, came towards me, his eyes full of squirrelly things I couldn't read. And had no intention of staying around to spell out. It looked like he'd just finished throttling Jangala, exactly the same as he'd done to Lincoln, and was eyeing off his next victim.
I threw the table at him and crashed out through the flimsy back wall.
Which was a mistake, for two reasons. The first was that it led me to stumble over another body. Maggie's, this one, looking even deader than her husband. The right side of her head was smashed in, a pool of blood coagulating in the dust. Blakie's carved fighting-stick lay alongside the body. A picture of his bloodstained knuckles flashed before me. At least the poor old girl's eyes were closed.
The second reason was that it put Blakie between me and my car.
Which could well be the fatal mistake, I realised as he came lurching out at me like a nesting crocodile.
I set off running, into the scrub.
Blakie lurched into a rambling pursuit.
My misspent youth hadn't given me much, but it had taught me how to run, and I felt pretty sure I could outpace the middle-aged maniac on my tail. I'd shake him off, circle back round to the car.
Yet another mistake, I concluded soon afterwards, as my wild sprint withered to a canter and then collapsed into a desperate, lung-burning scramble.
I thought about the last time I'd seen Blakie, loping up into the hills with a posse of fit young coppers eating his dust. No way was I going to outrun this bastard.
He took it easy for a while, not in any apparent rush to get in there and wring my neck. But, as the years in which my main form of exercise had been rolling smokes and striking matches kicked in, he began to gain ground.
My mouth felt like it had been mud-rendered, my lungs were raked by fire, my guts wanted to give up both the ghost and the goulash I'd had for breakfast. The crash of branches in my face mingled with the crash of blood through my veins. Strange pains began cutting through my ribcage. Thin red scrawls flicked across my forearms. My heart was all pumped up and going like a pub drummer on top-drawer speed.
I lost him for a while in the thick scrub round the Purrapuru Waterhole. Lost myself too. But when I burst out onto the main track he was there waiting for me. Close enough for me to see the Jack Nicholson gleam in his eyes, Close enough to smell his raw, predatory breath.
I wheeled around and set off in the opposite direction, westwards. At least I was on what passed for a public road round these parts. An occasional station or mining vehicle passed this way. But I was flailing hopelessly and fading fast.
Christ! I thought, if what was spiralling through my brain could be called thought, what have I done? What was it my father had told me about playing with black fire? What had McGillivray told me about interfering in police business? Okay, okay, I conceded, I'd let this be a lesson to me. All this time I'd been trying to pin the crime onto somebody else, when the real killer was the first and most obvious candidate.
I lost my footing, skidded in the gravel. As I knelt in the dirt I heard something up ahead. Something miraculous, man-made, mechanical.
A motor.
Salvation? I staggered round a bend and there it was, in the middle of the road: a white Hino twin-cab. Just a few hundred metres away.
But leaving me to my fate, I realised in despair as it took off. I yelled feebly, waved my arms. Yes! The vehicle stopped. They'd seen me. No, they hadn't! A bloke on the back of the truck jumped down and began to examine the ground.
Shit! He waved his mates forward and climbed aboard. They began to move off. The bastards! I gave a yell so pathetic I could hardly hear it myself. The truck crept slowly forward.
Blakie didn't look too happy at the prospect of my getting away. '*Warlukunjumanar he yelled. Come here!
Sure Blakie, no worries.
His face gave new shades of meaning to the word 'ugly' as he leapt at me, but all he got was a handful of shirt. The adrenalin rush that followed gave me a velocity I didn't know I had and carried me all the way to the tow bar.
'Help…' I gasped. The bloke on the back of the truck - skinny and dark, with five o'clock spikes and the eyes of a byzantine Christ - turned round and stared at me in disbelief.
Not that I could blame him, I figured, catching a glimpse of myself in the chrome: denim skirt ripped and ragged, scratches and blood all over the shop, streaks of sweat and dirt, shreds of clothing on muddy breasts.
But he thumped the roof, and I blessed what I took to be his little Mediterranean heart.
'Hey, Bernie!' he yelled, not taking his eyes off me in case I vanished back into the desert, 'pull up!'
The vehicle drew to a halt. The bloke on the back continued to stare. 'You right there, lady?'
Am I right? I bloody well am now that you're here. I could have just about leapt in and rooted him on the spot. I sank to my knees, heaving for breath, but kept a tight grip on the tray. They weren't going anywhere without me.
I glanced back down the track. Blakie stood there agitated and scowling, his nostrils flared, his mouth a mess of snarls and desert dentistry. The prospect of tackling a truck-load of burly miners - there were four of them, and the tray was full of hard hats and hammers, hydraulic hoses, crowbars - was enough to make even him think twice. Presumably they were making their way to town from one of the mines out west.
The driver's window rolled down and a head appeared: forty-ish, fair-haired,
covered in dust but vaguely familiar.
'Madam?' he asked. 'Do you need help?'
'Help?' I gasped, climbing to my feet. 'You dunno the half of it! Just gemme the fuck outta here!'
They looked shocked. Shit, I thought, just what I need. Prim miners.
'Good God,' exclaimed the driver. 'It's Jack Tempest's daughter.'
It took me a second or two to place him, so scattered were my wits: Bernie Sweet, the miner who'd come to call upon my father. Yet again, Dad and his mates were saving my bacon.
I sucked all the air I could suck, then spat out a scattered explanation: 'There's been a killing. Two killings. Blackfeller camp back there. Bloke who did it… bloody madman, on my tail…'
Bernie looked up and back.
So did I.
The track was empty.
'Madman, you say?' he asked, clearly suspicious that the neighbourhood maniac was kneeling in front of him. The dirty back
window was rolled down and a head like a hairy gumboot appeared, stared at me: 'If we are gonna give 'er a lift, Sweetie, watch out for your fuckin radio - she'll flog it if it isn't bolted down.'
Camel.
I glanced up into his bloodshot eyes and tried to smile. Even Camel looked like a knight in hairy armour to me right now. 'Look, Camel, I suggest we forget about any little differences we might have had in the past. There's a killer close behind me and there's no telling what he'll do.'
Which there wasn't. At least he couldn't say I hadn't warned him. No sooner had the words left my mouth than something long and lethal came whooshing out of the bushes on the other side of the truck.
The skinny feller on the back gasped, cursed, clutched his chest and looked at the inch of wet wood in his fingers in astonishment. Not that that particular inch was the problem - it had already done its damage. It was the twelve inches still in his body that was killing him.
In the wake of the spear came the madman himself, laying into the poor bastards like a bull with a bullet up its arse. He ripped the back door open with an almighty roar and plucked poor Camel from his perch as easily as he would have plucked a blowie from his beard. Then he speared him into the side of the truck. Head first.
Blakie hit the front passenger door before Camel had hit the deck, ripping it open - just about ripping it off its hinges - with a ferocity that stunned the bloke sitting there, but not Bernie Sweet, who used the intervening seconds to seize a rifle from the rack behind him.
Blakie grabbed the startled passenger by the beard and dragged him out, began stomping his head into the dirt. Kept stomping his head into the dirt until Bernie levelled the rifle, pulled the trigger and blew a great red hole into his corrugated chest.
I was looking into Blakie's eyes just as he was hit, and such was the fury I saw there that I knew a few grams of lead wouldn't hold him, knew he'd just keep going, insane and unstoppable, until he killed the lot of us.
But he didn't.
He flew up and back, arms and legs going every which way, and landed on the wind-row. He did raise his head for a moment, his eyes burning with high-octane hatred, his green teeth twisted into a ferocious grimace.
Then he dropped back down. Lay still.
The silence reverberated as powerfully as the chaos that had preceded it. Somewhere in the treetops a crow called, a long, falling sigh. A dying sigh. Bernie climbed out, cast a measured glance at the body, checked for a pulse. Didn't find one. Looked up at me.
'That your madman, Emily?'
He turned back to where his shafted off-sider lay gasping against the sides of the truck.
'Jesus!' I heard him exclaim. 'Tony!' Then he got to work.
This is one cool bastard, I thought, as I watched him try to save his mate. Must come from running a show out bush. I looked on with growing admiration as he moved into paramedic mode: grabbing a first-aid kit, applying a pressure bandage, attempting a bit of messy CPR.
I stirred myself and did what I could to help, but it was no use.
'Lost him,' he murmured a few minutes later, shaking his head, glancing at Blakie's body and cursing. 'Fucking thing's gone through his heart.'
I sat on the step, my own heart pierced by a raft of black emotions. Dejection, shock, dismay. And not a touch of guilt. What a mess, I brooded. What an A-grade fucking disaster. And I got the poor bastards into it.
'What was his name?' I asked.
'What?' asked Bernie, looking up at me.
'Your mate. I didn't even know his name.'
'Tony,' Bernie murmured darkly. 'Tony D'loia.'
'He have any family?'
'Family?' For a moment he looked as though he didn't know the meaning of the word, then he shook his head. 'None that I know of. Just us, I suppose. We were partners. Poor bugger - all he was looking forward to was a quiet drink in the beer garden.'
'You're heading in for Bluebush?'
'We were. Fellers have been working hard for weeks.'
I went over and put a hand on his shoulder. 'I can't tell you how bad I feel about all this, Bernie. If I'd known I was bringing this maniac down on top of you…'
He glanced at me, then looked away, shaking his head. 'Wasn't your fault…'
What was left of his outfit had picked itself up out of the bull- dust and staggered in to join us by now. First came Camel, gradually unscrambling his brains after his encounter with Blakie. Then Mai, the front passenger and, I realised, his occasional flatmate. Last time I'd seen the bloke he'd been decorating the couch. On closer inspection he looked like a lot of other miners I'd met over the years: head like a dead leather jacket above a shapeless bulk; gruff, morose, baggy-bearded and blue singleted.
'Christ,' rasped Camel, staring at his murdered workmate. 'Tony. Is he…?'
Bernie nodded.
Camel glared malevolently at the outstretched Blakie, whose resident flies had begun to resettle after their recent disturbance.
'Black bastard!' he spat. I didn't feel like arguing the point, bit of a black bastard though I might have been myself.
Either Mai wasn't as close to the dead man or he wasn't the demonstrative type. Whatever the reason, he didn't have much to say. He settled against the bull-bar and glowered out into the bush, alone with whatever was oozing through his brain.
For myself, I didn't care what any of them did or thought.
They'd saved my life. At the cost of one of their own. And Bernie Sweet, clearly the head honcho, couldn't have been more solicitous: he plied me with water and coffee, settled me under a tree, threw a rug across my legs.
'You sure you're okay, Emily?' he enquired, looking over my battered body with an air of deep concern. 'You've had a hell of a shock.'
'Bit shook up, but I'm fine, thanks. Just amazed to be still in the land of the living.'
'And you reckon he's killed someone else back in the camp?'
'Another couple, looked like. But I wasn't hanging around for the post-mortem. And there's a woman missing.'
'We'll get you back to town as soon as possible. You ought to see a doctor. But what about this missing woman?'
'Her name's Hazel. I reckon I know where she'll be - if she's still alive.'
He glanced at his battered workmates, then said, 'Give me a few minutes to sort things out, then we'll see what we can do to help. There's nothing more we can do here.' It was a generous offer, given the circumstances.
He went back to the truck and fired up a short-wave under the dash. I sat in the shade of a whitewood tree, leaned my back against its rough bark and nursed my coffee. Normally I would have found it vile: a murky conglomeration of UHT, sugar and bore water. Right now it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever tasted. Every sip savoured of salvation. Heaven in a pannikin. Alive alive-o.
I settled back, closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Suddenly exhausted and content to let this competent dude run things. Not my usual modus operandi, but what I'd been through in the last hour would have been enough to make George Orwell turn things over to big brother for a bit.
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Then I thought, Hazel.
My peace of mind shattered like a thunder-egg in a fire. Where the hell was she? I scratched the sand with a stick, drew circles and arrows, found myself beginning to shake with fear. Had she gotten away, or was her broken body lying somewhere in the scrub?
What on earth - or out of hell - had possessed Blakie? For a moment I told myself that maybe their absurd affair would be her salvation. Maybe the fact that they slept together would have stayed his hand, inclined him towards mercy?
Christ, I was fooling myself and I knew it. He'd gone right over the edge. From what I'd seen of his rampage today, he'd have killed her as casually as he'd have knocked a goanna on the head.
I pulled myself up.
No, until I knew that she was dead, until I touched her cold body with my own hands, she was still alive. Still out there somewhere.
I'm forever making wagers with myself, and I made one now. If she was alive we'd be okay. The lot of us - me, Hazel, what was left of the Moonlight mob. We'd work our way out of these horrors and we'd flourish. If she wasn't…
No. I shook my head. It was too awful to contemplate.
I'd never felt so dependent on anybody in my life.
Bernie came back, squatted beside me. I found his presence - not just his bulk but his burly self-confidence, his fluidity, his ease of command - immeasurably reassuring. With him around, at least we had a chance. 'Police are on their way, but it'll be a few hours. I told them we're heading out to find this friend of yours. She may be injured.'
'From what I've seen today that's not very likely. Blakie doesn't injure, he slaughters. But thanks.'
'My God, you don't have to thank me. If we don't look out for each other out here, who else will?' I smiled gratefully. 'Where do you think she'd be?'
'Place we used to hang out as kids,' I told him. 'Especially when there was trouble.'
'So where is it, this hideaway?' he asked.
'Maybe fifteen, twenty k's to the north. An old police station.'
'Police station?' He gave me a peculiar look, then smiled. 'I don't suppose there's any old policemen out there?'
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