Cam nodded. Cleanskins were young animals yet to be branded and an effortless prize for a stock thief.
‘In other areas, closer to towns, they create diversions and move in when everyone is distracted. No one gives much thought to the emergency evacuation of stock.’
‘I’m guessing it was Timothy Giles who paid Mungo to light the fire the other night.’
Fielding nodded. ‘Then there’s the stealing of small numbers of boutique stock once they’ve been conveniently yarded by the farmers for transport to private sales.’
‘Like those Stud Dorpers with Q fever.’
‘Right. Q fever can’t be detected, of course, but in other cases substandard or diseased stock are sent straight through to the abattoir and disposed of as quickly as possible.’
‘But what about the meat inspectors?’
‘Many of them are in Giles’s pocket. A meat inspector called John Buckingham disappeared last year and we think the Gileses are behind it.’ Fielding flattened his puff of blow-dried hair and sighed. ‘But as usual, we have no proof.’
Cam remembered the name Buckingham from the Missing Persons list he’d inherited when he’d first moved to Glenroyd Station.
‘Missing without trace,’ Cam mused. ‘But aren’t the stock to be slaughtered meticulously counted?’
‘Yes, to a degree, but what’s examined more carefully is the waste product. So many animals in equals so much waste product out, right?’
Cam nodded.
‘When extra animals are slipped into the abattoir for slaughter, the extra waste has to be disposed of, otherwise the weights and measures don’t match.’
‘Don’t tell me — the extra blood meal from the rendering factory goes into the animal feed.’
‘Right. It wouldn’t be so bad if it only went into the pig and chook food, which usually contains meat meal anyway, but at Wetherby’s it goes into the ruminant food too. And no one can tell by looking at it, it all looks more or less the same.’ Field licked his lips and glanced around the kitchen. ‘It’s something I’ve only recently discovered myself.’
Oh, yes, sure it is, Cam thought as he scrutinised the younger man across the table. He took in the designer clothes, the gold bracelet, the puffed hair and rigid jaw, and saw a man desperate to make his mark. He wondered how long Fielding had known about the contaminated food.
But contaminated stock food would, at worst, incur a fine, a short prison sentence and possible closure of the feed mills. While this would be a boost to an ambitious cop’s career, multiple murder convictions would be better still.
Cam could only hope Fielding wasn’t walking too much of a fine line to achieve his goal. No one knew at this stage what contaminants the processed stock food could be carrying, or how long it had been carrying them. This uncertainty made the need for the success of tomorrow’s operation all the greater.
Cam shook his head. ‘Animal products in bovine food. A sure way of starting up mad cow disease.’
‘Yes, and a host of other diseases to boot — Johne’s disease, brucellosis, anthrax, to name just a few. Then there’s also the danger of chemical residue from stolen stock recently wormed and not withheld from slaughter. No serious damage has been done yet, but we can’t gin around any longer.’
No damage that you know of, Cam thought, cynically.
‘It’s only a matter of time before we have some kind of epidemic on our hands, and tomorrow’s our best chance of preventing it.’
Cam drained the last of his scotch. ‘Right, so what do you want me to do?’
Fielding reached for a backpack he’d stowed under the kitchen table and removed a map. He spread it out then stabbed at it with a long finger.
***
The excitement of tomorrow’s sting had driven away Cam’s exhaustion and eased his headache to nothing but a gentle throb. After they’d discussed the plan, he saw Fielding out of his front door and turned quickly back into the kitchen, eager to plot his team’s part in the night’s strategy.
He rummaged through the papers in one of the kitchen drawers, searching out some writing materials. About to lay his hand upon a pad and pencil, he became conscious of a shift in the air behind him.
Ruby. He turned and bumped the drawer closed with his hip.
She’d lost weight during her illness and done a lot of sleeping and even some crying, which was unusual for her. Her bulky towelling dressing gown seemed to be smothering her thin frame and her pale skin was a stark contrast to the ribbon of black regrowth along the parting of her bleached hair. She was staring at her feet. Her bare toes were digging into a torn patch of lino on the kitchen floor as if waiting for a nail to rip into them, maybe even hoping one would.
‘I heard everything,’ she said, hanging her head.
Cam braced himself for a tantrum that never came. She was too far gone for tantrums, he realised, when he saw her face cave in and the tears begin to track down her cheeks.
‘There’s nothing to worry about, really,’ he said, shrugging impotently. He wanted to rush over and take her in his arms. Instead he rocked on his feet, unsure whether she would want it.
Ruby made the decision for him. In an instant her arms were around his neck, her tears soaking through his shirt. He clasped her to him, doing his best to steady the shake of her thin shoulders.
‘They have guns, I heard that man say they did,’ she sobbed.
‘He said they might have guns, and if they do we’re ready for them. We have the advantage of surprise and there’ll be far more of us than there are of them. There’s nothing to worry about, really,’ he said again.
‘Please be careful.’ She took a shuddering breath. ‘I can’t lose you too.’
He took his daughter by the hand, leading her into the lounge room, where they sat together on their lumpy old couch. He couldn’t remember when they’d last sat there without the TV on. Neither said anything for a minute, just sat, his arm around her shoulders. He looked at the sparse furnishing of his rented police cottage, his eyes lingering on the picture of Elizabeth and Joe above their fake fireplace.
She clasped hold of his arm, squeezed it and leaned into him while they talked. After a while her breathing stilled and she slept.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Saturday evening
Cam had lost count of the number of cigarettes Pete had smoked. He was finishing one now, and Cam could see the red tip glow with a final burst through the dividing blackness. He watched the well-practised routine from where he sat in the driver’s seat of the police car. The constable took his last crackling inhalation, flicked the butt to the ground and put it out with the toe of his boot. Satisfied it was extinguished, he picked up the butt and placed it in a small plastic bag from his pants pocket, fuller than a pub ashtray.
Pete rejoined Cam and Leanne in the car, sliding into the back seat and bringing with him the odour of cigarette smoke and dusty eucalypt and the bite of distant wood smoke.
Earlier, when the headlights were on, Cam had noticed the skeletal remains of a kangaroo lying near the bush on the edge of the truck parking bay. Too far gone to smell, it was not much more than a collection of white bones in a shrunken leather coat.
Pete let out a long, smoky sigh and slammed his hands onto his knees.
‘Jeez, this whole business gives me the shits.’ He jabbed Leanne on the shoulder, making her turn. ‘And it’s not just the waiting, you know, I can take waiting. It’s the way the Feds have made this their own game, setting themselves up for all the glory while all we do is drudgery.’
‘But it is their op, Pete — of course they should be the ones in the front line, they’ve done it all before. You can hardly say we’re experienced at this kind of thing.’ Leanne caught Cam’s look and rolled her eyes.
‘Then how are we ever going to get the experience, eh? Sarge, what do you reckon?’
‘Consider yourself lucky to have even got this far, mate,’ Cam said, having no desire to swap places with the federal agents,
with the uncomfortable protective gear weighing as heavily on their shoulders as the prospect of failure, the endless waiting. At least he and his constables were sitting comfortably in the car, and could smoke and talk if they wanted. Cam kept quiet about the position he’d been offered with the team in the paddock and refused. It had been his compromise for Ruby.
‘It’s all very well for you, Sarge — you’ve been there done, that.’ Pete blew out a breath and flung himself back against the seat like a petulant child. ‘All we can do is sit and wait here like dummies while Creep-Features leads the charge.’
The silence stretched. After some more brooding, Pete snorted and tapped Leanne on the shoulder again. ‘He fancies you, you know.’
Leanne didn’t turn. ‘Who?’ Then she realised who he meant. ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ But in the light from the dash, Cam saw her mouth twitch with a smile.
‘Yes, he does, I saw him checking you out during the briefing.’
‘Pete, that’s enough,’ Cam snapped. ‘Talk by all means, but save this kind of conversation for the pub.’
Pete grunted and slumped back into his seat. Every now and then he let out an impatient sigh. If he wasn’t careful, he’d soon be hyperventilating, Cam thought. They were in the car Leanne usually drove, which had just come back from the panel beater. Cam wondered if she’d left any paper lunch bags in the glove box.
Several minutes passed.
Cam began to think about the murder Leanne’s father had allegedly witnessed, and about his refusal to name anyone involved except for Jack Ivanovich, even though Fielding and Cam were sure Giles was behind it. Using the mobile number Leanne had provided, he’d spoken to Matt Henry earlier that day but gleaned very little from him. He’d got the feeling Henry’s level of cooperation might change once the Gileses were captured and safely behind bars.
When he’d finished talking to Matt Henry, he’d offered the phone to Leanne. She’d turned away tight-lipped and refused to speak to her father.
The radio had been as dead as the roo on the side of the road. They were following their orders of radio silence, which meant that only matters of extreme urgency were to be broadcast lest the stock thieves pick them up on their CB radios. Half an hour or so earlier they’d spotted the double-decker road train heading down the highway towards the ambush. Following orders, they’d radioed in using the code, warning the waiting Feds of the vehicle’s approach.
But there was no sign yet that the sting had worked; if it had, the radios would be spitting with excitement by now. When Cam was a rookie, radio silence had meant a complete lack of communication, and fortunately that had changed with the advent of mobile phones. Cam pulled out his and rang Fielding. The federal policeman answered after one ring.
‘What’s going on?’ Cam asked him.
‘Nothing so far, not a sign of them.’ On the other end of the phone, the younger man’s impatience was almost as palpable as Pete’s.
Pizzle had apparently revealed the plan to Fielding during one of their earlier contacts. Using motorbikes, the thieves were planning on driving a large number of fat Herefords along a sturdy fenceline to the corner of the paddock where they were being grazed. After boxing the cattle in with their mobile yards, they would load them onto the road train. The articulated caravan of double-decked trailers could shift up to one hundred head of cattle at a time.
To hide the noise of the mustering cattle and distract those living in the area, the thieves had lit a fire in neighbouring parkland, which was now being fought by the bush fire brigade. Cam could smell the acrid smoke leaking through the car’s ventilation ducts. He hoped to God Jo wasn’t involved.
He continued to listen to Fielding, tapping a pen against his teeth as he thought. After a moment he put his hand over the phone and asked Pete to grab the rolled-up map from the back seat. Then, phone in hand, he climbed out of the car and spread the map over the bonnet, the constables joining him. Pete held the map down and Leanne shone her torch on it.
Cam took the pen from his mouth. ‘Think carefully, Fielding. Is there anything else about this operation you forgot to mention? Anything else Pizzle said?’
‘Date, time, he showed me the area on the map, just as I told you last night.’ Cam could almost feel the prickles from the younger man’s voice jabbing into his hand through the phone.
A sudden thought made Cam clench the phone tight against his ear. ‘Did he pinpoint the spot exactly?’
‘He said the cattle on the property west of the hill that’s called the Widow’s Peak were the ones they were going for. That’s where we are now, but there’s still no sign of them. There’s plenty of cattle around, but they’re a rangy-looking mob, destined for the slaughter house, I reckon.’
Cam put his glasses on and leaned in to examine the map more closely. Realisation brought with it a sudden flush of heat and a renewed pounding of his head. ‘Oh, Christ!’
‘What’s the problem?’
‘Pilkington can barely read or write. Do you really think he can understand a map, that he knows east from west?’
Cam covered up the phone to block out Fielding’s hissed obscenities.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
The radio spat into life with a ferocity that had Leanne almost jumping in the passenger seat. ‘Obo One, Field Commander.’
Leanne lunged for the mike. ‘Obo One.’
‘Tango One heading north in your direction. Apprehend if possible using extreme caution.’
‘Understood. Obo One out.’ Leanne turned to Cam, who was already yanking the car around into position. ‘Cripes,’ she said. ‘They’re heading right towards us!’
‘Get the double gees from the boot,’ Cam ordered when the car was at a standstill once more. ‘Double gees’ were small metal spikes named after the vicious prickle that local mothers pulled from their kids’ feet all summer long. Police put them on roads to pop the tyres of speeding stolen cars.
Pete rushed to the boot to heft out the heavy black bag of star-shaped spikes. Leanne joined him, helping him spread them out across the road.
Cam heard the rumble of the road train several seconds before the headlights pierced the darkness as the truck emerged around the bend.
He clicked the Commodore’s lights off.
‘What do we do now, Sarge?’ Pete asked, throwing himself into the back seat.
Cam gripped the steering wheel, ready to move. ‘We let them get ahead, then follow them along the gravel to avoid the spikes ourselves. The truck’s tyres burst, it comes to a standstill, we arrest the offenders.’
‘Piece-a piss,’ Pete said.
The lights of the road train grew bigger. It shot towards them like a Christmas tree out of a cannon. For a moment the Commodore’s interior was filled with whirling splinters of dark and light. Alongside them now, the roar of the engine, the metallic clatter and rattle of the articulated trailers were almost deafening.
As the long truck rumbled past, Cam caught the shapes of tightly jammed, white-faced cattle, the flash of rolling eyes, shining muzzles and flaring nostrils. He eased his foot from the brake and purred the Commodore along the length of the clearing, keeping well behind the illuminated hulk.
They heard several successive pops, loud as gunshots.
The truck slewed left then right, forcing Cam to slow down. As the bitumen bit through the sagging rubber of one of the truck’s rear tyres, the blackness exploded into shooting fountains of sparks.
Another pop, another drunken swerve by the road train.
Cam turned on the Commodore’s headlights, Leanne flicked on the blue and reds and they watched the road train’s progress from a safe distance behind. It wobbled from side to side like a dying beast, before lurching to a standstill to sink upon its deflating tyres.
Pete let out a whoop and pulled himself forward to crouch in the gap between the front seats where there was a better view, one hand already moving towards the passenger door.
Cam parked the Commodore at right angles acros
s the road in front of the stricken leviathan to prevent a sudden dash for escape and to alert any approaching cars.
The officers sprang from their vehicle just as the truck’s cabin doors creaked open. Two men Cam didn’t recognise dressed in jeans and plaid shirts appeared, holding their hands above their heads, screwing up their eyes in the glare of the car’s lights.
‘There should be more than two of ‘em.’ Pete spoke through the side of his mouth as he led their approach, his gun drawn.
One of the men began to swear.
Cam slid his eyes along the length of the tightly packed road train. Jammed in tight, a cow let out a mournful bellow. The four double-tiered trailers began to rock to the sound of stamping hooves. A man foolish enough to hide in one of these would be trampled to death.
Leaving Pete and Leanne to deal with the men from the cabin, he moved cautiously down the body of the road train to the last trailer. Two off-road motorbikes had been stowed in the end compartment, but there were no signs of human occupants.
And then, as he was standing at the back of the road train, he saw a vehicle careering towards them, swerving along the verge to avoid the strewn double-gees, at about twice the speed the truck had been going. Behind it, the red and blue flashing lights and wailing siren of a police car in pursuit.
A voice-over of excited chatter broke from the Commodore’s radio as Cam sprinted to rejoin his officers who’d just cuffed the men from the truck to their roo bar.
‘There’s another one coming,’ he gasped. ‘Back to the car.’
But there was no time to reach it. The looming four-wheel drive slowed slightly, aiming for the clearing where they’d earlier been parked. In the front Cam saw the shapes of two men.
Flare-up: a tense, taut mystery (A Cam Fraser mystery) Page 21