Flare-up: a tense, taut mystery (A Cam Fraser mystery)

by Felicity Young

  The building’s stench followed them, clinging to Cam’s clothes like cigarette smoke as they walked to the small olive grove where he’d been comforting Rita earlier. The two men stood in the shade, next to the tin-covered rubbish dump.

  Harris plunged his little finger down his ear with the ferocity of a skewer down a marrowbone. From his dripping nose to his blood-shot eyes, the razor rash on his neck to the crescents of sweat under the arms of his khaki shirt, the man was the very picture of discomfort. Cam couldn’t help feeling sorry for him.

  Harris made a rasping sound from the back of his throat before he said, ‘I believe Darren Pilkington was a friend of yours.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say we were friends exactly, but we knew each other as kids. We were at school together.’

  ‘The boys’ home?’

  ‘St Bart’s Farm School, yes.’

  ‘It’s the agricultural college now, Sarge — that big ugly building you would’ve driven past on your way here.’ Leanne shouted the words at Harris as she approached with a large roll of crime-scene tape tucked under one arm, a bottle of water and a small package clasped in her hand.

  ‘I thought you might want to try one of these pills,’ she added, handing Harris the bottle and package. ‘My mum gets hay fever and asked me to pick these up for her from the chemist this morning.’

  Sergeant Harris took the pills and water like a condemned man receiving a written reprieve.

  ‘They might make you sleepy, Mum only takes them at night,’ Leanne cautioned.

  ‘Anything’s got to be better than this. Thanks.’ With shaking hands, Harris peeled two pills from the foil-backed packet and washed them down with the water.

  As Leanne moved off to tape the perimeter of the shed, Harris continued with his line of questioning as if there’d been no interruption. ‘Tell me more about Darren Pilkington.’

  Cam shrugged. ‘I can’t give you much of his recent history. I’ve been living in Sydney, only been back in WA for a few months, not seen much of him.’

  He paused. Harris waited for more.

  ‘We were in one of the last shipments of kids from England in the early sixties, sent as babies and young children to St Bart’s to be turned into farm labourers,’ Cam continued. ‘England was overpopulated, Australia the opposite. They needed a young work force.’

  ‘Orphans of the Empire — yes, I saw a TV show once about child migrants.’

  Cam flicked his gaze to a distant olive tree. The sunlight on the undersides of the leaves gave the illusion of frost.

  He shrugged. ‘It was difficult for a weedy kid like Pizzle. He was never the sharpest tool in the shed and got bullied a lot when he was younger. He grew up learning how to pander to the tough guys, and I guess you could say he was easily led.’

  ‘And so began a life of petty crime,’ Harris said.

  Cam turned back to face the sergeant. ‘I’ve never pulled his record. I know very little about his adult life, hadn’t seen him for years until recently.’

  ‘His last conviction was for burglary. He’d been under the influence of amphetamines and served four years. He met Mrs Pilkington when he was in jail. She was a Salvation Army visitor.’

  ‘I know they were married when he was still inside,’ Cam said.

  ‘And how long ago was that?’

  ‘Couple of years, I think.’

  ‘Got on, did they?’

  ‘Never saw much of them, but I always thought they did.’

  ‘Yeah, one of those kinds of marriages.’ He sighed and shook his head.

  Cam knew what the sergeant was alluding to. Some women, commonly referred to as ‘prison worms’, turned marrying cons into a career path. Government benefits were huge provided the man remained inside. Once he was released, it was commonplace for the woman to drive him back to crime and incarceration so she could recommence receiving the payments. Until now, the thought that Rita, a Salvo, could have been one of these women had never crossed his mind. But he supposed prison worms could fool charity organisations just as easily as they could fool the men they married. He realised then that he knew very little about Rita Pilkington.

  ‘Think she could’ve done it?’ Harris asked.

  Cam paused. ‘Unlikely, but you can never assume anything in this job, can you? I can’t see why she’d ask me to shear her sheep if she knew there was a body in the shed. ‘

  ‘Kids?’

  Cam shook his head.

  Harris thought aloud. ‘So, he’s an orphan and has no kids of his own. It looks like the body’s too decayed for fingerprints or visual identification. Leanne!’

  The young constable knotted the last of the crime-scene tape and trotted over.

  ‘Go on up to the house, check on Mrs Pilkington, offer her a cuppa and ask her to get you Mr Pilkington’s toothbrush and hairbrush,’ Harris said. ‘We’ll need them for DNA. I’ll join you in a minute. We may as well start a search of the house while we wait for SOCO.’

  A part of Cam had hoped to find out that his successor was a blithering idiot, but while Harris was not in tune with country policing, Cam had been unable to find fault with the man’s investigative techniques — in spite of his debilitating hay fever.

  ‘Apparently, when Mrs Pilkington first reported Darren missing, she mentioned that Darren phoned you the day before he disappeared,’ Harris said.

  Cam nodded. ‘I was out with my daughter, we were picking up a horse we’d just bought. He left a message on my answering machine, said he was in trouble and needed my help. He sounded upset. The answering machine recorded the time as 4.55 pm.’

  ‘But you didn’t ring him back?’

  ‘Not till later the next day, and then I only spoke to Rita. She told me Darren had gone to pick up stock feed in town, said she’d tell him I’d called. Apparently she did, but he never rang me back.’

  Harris said, ‘They had tea together that evening and then she went out to her Women’s Guild meeting. It seems the vet was one of the last to see him alive. I sent Constable Derek Witherspoon over to have a word and he’s just called back, says he’s satisfied with the vet’s version of events. And the vet did have an alibi for the early part of that evening. He was with someone you know, a schoolteacher called Joanna Bowman.’

  If Harris hadn’t had his fists in his eyes, he might have noticed Cam’s start of surprise. Cam had to remind himself that Jo’s prior relationship with the vet was her business. There was probably a perfectly innocent explanation for her visit. And the fact that the vet was possibly the last person to see Pizzle alive was Harris’s business. Whoever’s business it was, it wasn’t his.

  He took a step back, as if it might help to distance him from the problem.

  Harris said, ‘I’ll go and see the vet myself next time, see if I can find out more about him.’ He jerked his head in Leanne’s direction and lowered his voice. ‘I can’t get over the lack of senior officers here, they’re all so bloody young. Who knows what Witherspoon might have missed?’

  ‘What they lack in age they make up for with enthusiasm,’ Cam said, defensive of his old team.

  Harris reluctantly agreed. ‘I suppose so. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that Mrs Pilkington came home at about eleven that night from her meeting and Mr Pilkington was gone. I think you know the rest.’

  ‘She rang me the next afternoon, quite upset. I told her to ring you.’

  ‘She did, and I’m afraid I didn’t think much about it.’

  Cam sighed. ‘Neither did I — not for the first few days, anyway.’

  He noticed that some of the redness and swelling had left Harris’s face, replaced with a different kind of discomfort: a mirror image of his own, he decided.

  Harris dashed Cam a smile without showing his teeth. ‘I don’t think I have any more questions for the moment. I’ll catch you later if necessary.’

  ‘Yup, you know where to find me.’

  Leaving the new sergeant to it, Cam trudged towards his Toyota utility. He didn’t
bother to pick up his letter of resignation when the breeze from the opening door blew it from the dash to the floor of the cab.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  An autumn evening of golden stillness fell about the two of them with the gradual dipping of the sun. Somewhere from a distant paddock, Jo heard the rattle and thrum of a tractor pulling a plough as it prepared the ground for seeding. There’d already been several false starts to the autumn rains, oppressive days of heavy cloud that rumbled heavily towards the wasting sea.

  Jo sat on the fence near the abandoned Rawlins farmhouse and listened to Ruby’s excited monologue. It made a pleasant change. Over the last few weeks Cam’s daughter had spoken very little to her and at times even seemed to avoid her.

  ‘Of course, we’ll have to work really hard to get this place established. I’d say it could take as long as a year to get the agistment centre off the ground, but once we get the clients the place will pay for itself.’ The girl chatted on, with no sign of the headache she’d earlier blamed on the humidity.

  The air was busy, with birds flitting in and around the surviving shrubs of the old homestead’s garden. Bottlebrush quivered, wattle rustled, pink and grey galahs turned somersaults in marri trees dotted with puffs of pale yellow blossom.

  ‘There’s the stables, hay shed, troughs, arena and the round yards to organise, and the house of course. I’m not sure what the water situation is like. Did the real estate agent mention that to you?’

  Jo shook her head and adjusted her position on the rickety fence, about the only piece of infrastructure on the run-down property that still had any structural worth. As it creaked and groaned beneath her, she doubted even that. ‘I noticed a dry creek bed at the bottom of the valley,’ she said. ‘I don’t think your father would be impressed.’

  ‘Probably only runs in winter.’ Ruby let out an impatient groan. ‘But where the hell is he? It’ll be dark soon and he won’t be able to see a thing. I may as well see if there’s a tank around the back now.’ She jumped off the fence, about to head off.

  ‘There’s been some kind of trouble at the Pilkington place, I told you that.’ Jo heard the high-pitched whine of a mosquito and slapped at her neck.

  Ruby stopped in her tracks and huffed out a breath. ‘Yeah, typical. I thought once he stopped being a cop all this bullshit would stop too.’

  ‘Ruby, that’s enough,’ Jo said in her schoolteacher’s voice. She tried not to use it too much when they were out of school, so when she did it was usually effective.

  ‘But you know what he’s like. Talk about anal fixation!’

  Jo laughed so hard she nearly fell off the fence. When she’d finally caught her breath she said, ‘Perhaps a more appropriate phrase would be . . .’ she risked her position on the fence to draw quote marks in the air, ‘”When it comes to the police force your father is obsessive.”’

  Ruby waved her hand. ‘Whatever. Most English teachers would say that, I guess.’

  Jo expected the remark to be followed by a cheeky grin, and was disappointed by its absence. A lot can happen in a few weeks, she reflected, knowing Ruby was still having trouble adjusting to the deepening relationship between her father and her teacher.

  They heard the sound of the engine before they saw the dust cloud. Then they saw the dented old ute roaring along the gravel, the binder twine attached to every fixture streaming behind it like witch’s tresses.

  Ruby ran towards Cam as he pulled up outside the abandoned farmhouse. ‘About time, too!’ she said. ‘Dad, I just want to check around the back of the house — I’ll see you in a sec, okay?’

  Was this a ploy to give them time alone? Jo wondered. Probably not, they must be the last thing on the over-excited teenager’s mind at this moment.

  With her white socks around her ankles, lace-up shoes and summer school dress, Ruby could have been any excited fifteen-year-old running around an old house. Other than the tension over her father’s love life, Ruby appeared to be settling into her new home well, enjoying school and showing fewer of the behavioural problems that had earlier driven Cam close to the point of despair. But Jo knew that the innocent appearance belied the inner turmoil of a girl who’d experienced more trauma and tragedy over the past few years than most people endure in a lifetime. Jo had adopted a policy of tolerance within reason when dealing with Ruby’s minor transgressions, even if it did mean a bit of extra lip-biting on her part. The tension between them was only temporary . . . she hoped.

  Jo climbed down from the fence more cautiously than Ruby had. Her movement provoked a warning crack from the fence’s timber and then her foot snapped through the rotten lower railing. Shit. Another pair of work stockings ruined.

  She moved into Cam’s welcoming hug, breathing in his lemon-and-lime-scented shaving cream.

  ‘Mmm, you smell good,’ she whispered into his ear.

  ‘I had to shower before I came.’

  Jo pulled back and looked into his face with concern. ‘That bad?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Pizzle?’

  ‘I think so.’ He hesitated for a moment. Keeping his voice low, he said, ‘You didn’t tell me you saw the vet on the night Pizzle disappeared.’

  Jo frowned. ‘But I didn’t know then that it was the night of Pizzle’s disappearance. At the time I thought nothing of it — why should I have?’

  Can wiped his hand across his mouth and looked at the ground.

  She punched his arm as realisation dawned. ‘Cameron Fraser, I do believe you’re jealous!’

  He looked back up, his eyes crinkling with his smile. ‘Of you and all your irritating habits? He’s welcome to your dried insects in the pantry cupboard . . .’

  ‘They were for the honeyeater I was rearing.’

  ‘Which you only told me about after I’d sprinkled them on my cereal! Feeding my lunch to the dog, sawing through the wall to rescue the kitten on the — ’

  ‘I couldn’t have left it there to die!’

  Cam put his hand on her arm, glanced over her shoulder and became serious again. ‘Here comes Ruby. Don’t tell her why I was late, let’s not spoil the evening.’

  But Ruby wasn’t interested in the reasons for Cam’s delay. ‘I can’t find the water tank, but I did find an old dunny. She snatched his hand from Jo’s arm and pulled him towards the front veranda. ‘Let’s go inside now.’

  His foot crashed straight through the first of the wooden steps. Ruby looked at him, aghast. For the first time this evening she seemed lost for words.

  ‘This shouldn’t be too hard to fix,’ Cam said with false cheer, extracting his foot from the honeycomb of rotten wood. He swept his hand upwards. ‘And some lacework on the top here will turn it into a pretty front porch. I can see myself on a rocking chair, whittling away at a piece of wood, a corn-cob pipe clamped between my teeth.’

  ‘A jug of moonshine by your side,’ Jo added.

  Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, you two, be serious! What do you really think, Dad?’

  ‘Let’s have a look inside.’

  They took cautious footsteps over the veranda slats and exchanged the golden evening for the dark interior of the old house. It had been lighter when Jo and Ruby inspected it before with the estate agent, but now peering inside was like looking through a dusty grey veil. Jo fumbled for the apple-sized light switch and groaned at its impotent click.

  ‘Electricity’s off,’ Ruby said, turning to Jo. ‘But it looked really good in daylight, didn’t it?’

  Jo nodded.

  Cam sniffed the air and wrinkled his nose. ‘Mildew and mice,’ he whispered to her as they clunked across the rocking floorboards, through the gutted kitchen and into an echoing room with a brick fireplace that looked like it had suffered a direct hit from a Sherman tank.

  ‘The lounge room,’ Ruby announced. ‘The main bedroom runs off this and the two other bedrooms are off the kitchen. The bedroom I want to sleep in has these really cool kind of louvre things. I could take the glass out altogethe
r if I wanted to.’

  Cam poked his head into the main bedroom and absently tore off a strip of shredding wallpaper, twisting it in his hands.

  ‘Bathroom?’ he asked.

  ‘Ummm, I can’t remember the guy mentioning one, can you, Jo?’

  ‘I think he said there was a wash-house somewhere off the house.’

  ‘I think it was near the dunny,’ said Ruby.

  ‘And they want six hundred thousand for this?’ The false optimism in Cam’s tone was already wavering.

  ‘Well, it’s on a hundred acres of land,’ Ruby said. ‘And there’s even a copper pot on the back veranda for us to boil our clothes in.’

  Jo turned away to hide her smile.

  ‘New fences, dams, troughs — Ruby, this place needs about half a million spent on it. I just don’t have that kind of money,’ Cam said.

  ‘But you’re going to be getting all that compensation.’

  He glanced at Jo then back to his daughter. ‘It won’t stretch this far, love, and without a steady job behind me, I’d never get the loan I’d need.’

  ‘But you could try . . .’

  Cam put his arm around Ruby’s thin shoulders and they walked back out into the violet evening. ‘Yes, I could always try.’

  ‘The real estate agent said he didn’t think the owners would mind if I brought Sweet-Face for a ride around the property,’ she said.

  ‘Not on your own, you won’t.’

  ‘But there’s a wicked hill leading up from the valley! I could really give him his head, let him go as fast as he liked, and not have to worry about him bolting off with me.’

  ‘You need to find someone to ride with first.’

  ‘What about that girl Anthea, at school? She has a pony and I’ve heard she’s a very good rider,’ Jo said.

  Ruby chose to ignore her. ‘But Dad . . .’

  She continued to whinge until something caught her eye and Cam was given a welcome reprieve. She wriggled away from his arm and ran down one side of the house. Cam and Jo didn’t follow, but listened when she called out: ‘I think we should build some horse yards near the house, it looks like there might have been old yards here before. We can save the stables for the agisters and have our horses closer to us, maybe with walk-in, walk-out sheds — what do you think, Dad?’