All of which he did.
27
As the door swung wide, Quinn could see in an instant that the cabin was empty. Grief and confusion jolted through him. Not a soul. Indeed, the place looked as though it had not been visited since that dreadful afternoon all those years ago. A pair of cockatoos flapped from their perch, squawked in the half-light and flew through a gaping hole in the roof. There was a pile of rotten wood in one corner. A fern shouldered through the floor. He stood there breathing hard, the revolver in one shaking hand. Unspent adrenaline pulsed through him. The place stank of mouldy wood, spider webs, animal droppings; of rape and murder. If only the darkness would speak.
Embarrassed and exhausted, he sank to his haunches to draw breath. The cuffs of his trousers were heavy with water and drying mud. After a moment, he slumped to the crumbling floor. This, then, was how it would end; as it had begun: at Wilson’s Point, wishing he had never been born. First exile, then war. Everything was in ruins. Everything. He lay down and sobbed.
How long he’d been lying there with his eyes closed he didn’t know, but after some time he became aware of a distant chorus of voices. The people of Flint were coming for him. He imagined them tramping across the banks of the reservoir, slipping here and there in the mud. His father and uncle would be at their head; then Jack Sully with his rickety gait; Mrs. Porteous in her widow’s weeds; old Mrs. Crink with her gauzy eyes, tap-tapping along with a stick; Bluey and McLaverty; the Harvey Brothers; Evelyn Higgins. He opened his eyes as if that might assist his hearing, but he soon lost track of the voices in the wind. No matter. Soon enough they would burst in on him and take him away. They would beat him and fill his pockets with rocks before throwing him into the reservoir, as the miners had done with outlaws in days gone by. And that would be that. He shouldn’t have been surprised at the outcome: in any endeavour, the possibilities for failure were almost limitless while happy endings offered but one result. The scabs and scars on his skin stung with sweaty irritation.
On the floor, hundreds of ants scurried about carrying shards of leaf in their pincers. So many of them, and all so inconsequential. As a boy, he had been fascinated by insects and spiders, and spent many happy hours inspecting redback spiders, centipedes and cicadas. Like humans, they inhabited their own universe of beauty and terror, the borders of which they thought they knew. He wondered if this might be the way God saw the human race as it went about its daily business. It must be simple to allow war and pestilence to flourish when the suffering of individuals was so distant, easy to permit them to murder and defile one another. The affairs of men were inconsequential.
He became aware again of voices calling out with some urgency but didn’t move. They would find him soon enough. One ant was beneath his nose and stood on its hind legs like a dog. The creature was gesticulating with its tiny pincers. It fell onto all six legs, scurried forward and stood again. He became aware of someone speaking. She’s not here, the voice was saying. He wiggled a finger in his ear to clear his damned hearing. He stared at the ant, who was by now just an inch from him. The insect was talking in a husky voice, repeating the same phrase over and over. He took her to the lock-up. To the lock-up. The ant tossed its head the way a horse might its mane, dropped down and trotted away. He heard the scratch of its claws on the boards and it was only then he understood that the voices were not those of people, but of the ants that swarmed over the cabin’s rotten floorboards.
Quinn picked up his revolver and lurched to his feet. His ears crowded with the urging not only of the ants but of the entire bush. As if a great engine were coming to life, the air throbbed with conversation, with currents of insistence and lament. It occurred to Quinn he might be able, should he try, to discern the shy whisper of nearby blades of grass. He took her to the lock-up, to the lock-up. Perhaps it was not too late, after all? He burst from the cabin and set off again through the bush, this time towards the police station on the other side of Flint.
Quinn passed the small dam and the perimeter of Sparrowhawk Mine at Flint’s eastern edge. After ten minutes he staggered from the bush like a crazed saint. He had lost his jacket somewhere, and scattered all over his filthy white shirt were the bloodied imprints of the crosses and other hieroglyphs scratched into his body. He crossed the river and skirted the Flats, where he paused under the shade of a lone birch tree. From the Anglican church came the swelling and falling tide of voices in hymn. It must be Sunday. He could see the police station fifty yards away over Gully Road.
A grey horse was tethered to the wooden fence and a sheep grazed in the deep shade of the garden’s elm tree. The police bicycle leaned against the station’s sandstone wall. Quinn’s heart was swollen with fear, but there was no room for hesitation. He crossed the road and entered the cool, dark station. This time. This time he would have his way.
28
His uncle was snoozing in his chair when Quinn entered. He roused himself, but Quinn was able to stride across the room and stick the revolver in his uncle’s face before the constable realised what was happening. Quinn considered shooting his uncle straight away but hesitated. He wanted Dalton to know why he was to be killed; that was the very essence of justice.
Dalton uttered something—Whoa or No—shielded his face with both hands and slid down in his wooden chair. His left hand was still bandaged.
“Where is she?” Quinn demanded.
“You again!”
“Where is the girl?”
“What are you talking about? Put the gun down at once. I’m the constable here. Don’t threaten me, man, or I’ll—”
Quinn gestured with the revolver. “Tell me where she is or I’ll shoot you.”
Dalton had managed to get to his feet, but he cowered anew at Quinn’s threat. The desk was a mess of papers and books, a tin plate with the glutinous carcass of a roast chicken. The station smelled queerly of smoky stone, like a church. “No,” he said weakly.
Quinn paused. “You still don’t recognise me, do you?”
“What? Yes, you’re that fellow from the graveyard the other da—Wackfield? Wakefield? I should have taken you in right then and there.”
“Try again. Closer. Stand up straight and look at my face, Robert.”
Dalton did as he was told. Then his gaze fell to take in the bloody patterns across Quinn’s shirt.
“Well?” Quinn asked.
Sweat glistened on Dalton’s pink forehead and there was a fresh scratch on his neck below his ear. His trousers were undone and his generous belly swooned over his belt. He motioned with his hands. “Put that revolver down, sir.”
“You really don’t recognise me?”
“Well, I don’t know. Tell me, then, if it’s so bloody important.”
“I’m your nephew.”
Dalton stepped back. His mouth curled into a sneer and then he craned forward like a pale, dumbstruck turtle. “William? Not little Quinn? It can’t be. They said you were dead. I saw the telegram myself.”
“The one that said I had been killed in the war?”
His uncle was taken aback. He inspected him again. “Don’t be ridiculous. You don’t look anything like him.”
“A lot has happened.”
“Indeed it has.” Dalton ran a hand across his brow. “Prove to me who you are, then.”
“I have no papers.”
“Then why should I believe you?”
Quinn thought for a moment. “I was born in 1893. I was named after my mother’s father, Quinn Dalton—your father, too —who died when a ship sank between Shanghai and Hong Kong. Sarah was born in ’97. You came here from London in”—he pondered for a few seconds—“1894, I believe. Or maybe ’95. Some said you had been forced to leave England.”
Whether Dalton believed Quinn or not, revealing his identity now felt like a miscalculation; his uncle looked less afraid, not more. Dalton hitched his trousers and straightened his disordered jacket. His eyes darted around, perhaps seeking his own revolver. “You are a lunatic, man. Any
one can learn dates. Leave now and I won’t take you in. Go on, clear off.”
But Quinn waved Dalton back against one of the stone walls and located the police revolver among the papers on the desk. He jammed it into his trouser pocket. “Where is Sadie Fox?”
Dalton examined him. It seemed he prepared to answer, then thought better of it. He belched.
“Well?”
The constable wiped his brow again and ventured a dry laugh. “You’re disgusting. Why did you come back here, eh? You animal. You know you destroyed your mother by what you did. You’re lucky you got away.”
“No such thing as luck.”
“Well, they would have hanged you, no worries. I would have hanged you from a tree myself if I got my hands on you. That poor girl. I saw you, Quinn. I saw you with that knife in your hand. You can’t fool me. Your father saw you, as well. Everyone knows you are guilty. They used to laugh about you and your sister. You know what they used to call you around here, eh? Do you know?”
“And I saw what you did to her. You and that fellow Gracie. Through a hole in the wall. I heard what you said that day, after you’d … finished with her.” Quinn gagged, hardly able to repeat those words yet again. “You said, Good day’s hunting, after all. I saw everything. I saw what you did to my sister. How you bickered with Jim Gracie afterwards. You’re the animal, not me.”
Dalton shifted from one bare foot to the other. His gaze flickered about the room. “You don’t know what you’re on about, you should be ashamed of yourself.”
“Oh, I am. Now. Where’s the girl?”
“There’s no one here but you and me.” Dalton eyed Quinn’s revolver. “Is that really you? Quinn? You’ve changed a lot. Why don’t we sit and have a drink, eh? Let’s relax a minute. You look dog-tired, you know that?”
Quinn allowed Dalton to move to the desk and dig out a bottle of liquor from a drawer. His uncle sat in the chair behind his desk and poured two glasses. He pushed one across to him. Quinn shook his head. “Where is Sadie Fox? I know you’ve been searching for her.”
Dalton sipped his drink. “Yes, that’s right. I have been keeping an eye out for little Sadie. Her mother died in the epidemic, you know, just a few weeks ago. Poor girl has no one left. Her brother went to war, her father vanished years ago. I have arranged for her to be taken into care, in an orphanage in Bathurst. That is part of what I do here in Flint, part of my job. She can’t possibly live up in the hills all by herself, can she? Sit down, Quinn, for God’s sake, you’re making me nervous.”
“You might think you got away with it, but you didn’t, you know that? I saw you that day. Jim Gracie is dead. I visited him yesterday. He’s strung up from the gum tree beside his house. He’s no use to you now.”
Dalton sat forward with something like triumph in his eyes. “Hah! There you go. Gracie was in Bathurst yesterday, you lying little shit. He’s back today.”
“No. He came back last night. He told me everything. Told me about the other girls. The Gunn girl.”
“Gracie is dead?”
“Yes.”
“And you killed him?”
Quinn thought about his response. “Yes.”
This news appeared to throw Dalton off balance, but he soon regained his composure. “And what do you want with this girl, eh?”
“I’ll look after her.”
Dalton snorted and emptied his glass. He leaned forward with his elbows on the desk. “No. Tell me. What do you really want with her?”
“I should just shoot you.”
“You’ll not get away with it. They’ll find you.”
“Like they found you?”
Dalton considered him with his amphibious gaze and rapped the desk gently with his knuckles. “I had a feeling you would return,” he said. “A bad feeling, mind. Mary has been talking about you a lot of late. About you and Sarah. Nathaniel noticed it, too. The poor woman is delirious, of course, but still … I’ve been keeping an eye out for you. For years I thought you would come back, but as time passed it seemed less and less likely. I have to admit, this is quite a surprise.”
“I bet it is.”
“If you are who you say you are, that is. What the hell did you think you would achieve in coming back here, anyway? Your poor sister is still dead. Everyone knows you did it.”
Quinn thought of the note in the match-safe in his pocket. Its fragile words. Don’t forget me. Come back and save me. Please. “I came to protect Sadie Fox,” he said. “And to get justice for my sister.”
His uncle gestured vaguely towards the distant sound of hymns coming from the church several streets away, then poured himself another drink. “They’d love to get their hands on you. All that talk of love and so on, but what they really like to do is tear some wrongdoer limb from limb. Make them feel like their God gives a damn, which doubtless he does not.” He emptied his glass in a single gulp and grimaced. “Is that all the evidence you have—that you say you saw me?”
“I saw you stab her.”
“But no one was with you, were they? Eh? You were alone? It isn’t as if you had any other friends.”
“I know what I saw.” Quinn’s voice was thin and reedy. Dalton had somehow managed to wrestle the initiative from him, even though Quinn had both revolvers.
“I know what I saw,” Dalton mimicked. “You’re bloody pathetic, you know that?” He wiped the back of his hand under his glistening nose. “Tell you what. Put the revolver down. Leave now and I won’t bother coming after you. Even considering Gracie. Get away from here and never come back. Let’s forget this ever happened. You’re not the kind of man who’d shoot an officer of the law, are you? I mean—”
From somewhere there came a high-pitched squeak. Dalton glanced at a door to his left that led to the adjacent cell.
Quinn jerked his head. “Is she in there?”
“I told you. There is no one here. That was just a mouse or something. This country is crawling with bloody vermin.” Dalton rubbed his cheek, then fingered the fresh scratch on his neck. “Why don’t you go in there and take a peek for yourself, if you’re so sure? Go on. It’s open. Look for yourself, Quinn. Go on.”
Quinn stared at Dalton. All these years his uncle had been dwelling like an imp in the back of his mind, and now he was here in front of him.
Robert took advantage of Quinn’s momentary disorientation. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded. “Everyone knows little Quinn is dead. You don’t even look like him. You’re just some crazy bastard. You know, after we left you that day in the cemetery, Mrs. Porteous commented on how strange you were. Highly disturbed, she said to me. Who the hell are you?”
Quinn had shuffled across to the cell door. A curious calm had entered him. He placed one hand on the heavy iron handle and paused. He faced his uncle and raised the revolver. “I’m the Angel of Death,” he said, and pulled the trigger. A shot, loud and hard.
Dalton grunted and fell back in his chair. His pudgy hands clasped at his chest. Blood oozed between his fingers. “Shit! You shot me, you crazy bastard.” He staggered wheezing to his feet. He fumbled for balance against the edge of the desk. “What are you doing? What are you doing? Help me.” Papers slid off the desk. The bottle smashed to the floor and the office was at once infused with the acrid smell of liquor. Dalton sprawled across the desk, and then slapped fishily to the floor where he groaned for several seconds before he was silent.
Shocked, Quinn stared at him and coughed. His hands shook. The Sword of Justice, he thought. After all these years. From the nearby church he heard hymns again. There’s a land that is fairer than day, and by faith we can see it afar … He crouched beside his uncle and listened for his breathing, but there was nothing. Blood seeped from beneath Dalton’s body and spread out over the floor. Quinn stepped over him and yanked open the heavy cell door. He started at an orange cat that blurred between his legs and bolted outside. “Sadie?” he whispered into the darkness. “It’s me.”
29
Quinn was ter
rified of what he might find, of what he might fail to find. When there was no answer, he stepped into the unlit cell. At first just dimness and the farmyard whiff of shit and hay. No one there. Again he whispered Sadie’s name. Gradually, his eyes adjusted and, sure enough, the girl materialised from the gloom, sitting on a lumpy mattress on the floor. She was gagged. Her eyes bulged at his entrance. There was straw in her hair and a fresh bruise on one cheek. Again that brief, unbearable squeak. Her hands were secured behind her back with a pair of cuffs, so he dashed to Dalton and rolled over his uncle’s heavy corpse to detach the ring of keys from his belt.
He loosened Sadie’s gag and unlocked the cuffs with trembling, bloodstained fingers. She was dishevelled and shaking. As soon as she was able, she ripped the gag off and threw it down before cowering against the wall. She spat on the floor and wiped her swollen mouth with the back of one hand.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
She threw him a quick and bitter glance. “Did you shoot him? I heard a shot.”
He nodded and raised the revolver, as if to prove it to her.
“Is he dead?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“He won’t come back again?”
“No. He’s dead.”
She sat back on the edge of the mattress with her hands on her knees, staring at the floor as if deep in thought. Then she looked up and prepared to stand. “What about Mr. Gracie? We have to go now or they’ll send him out to track—”
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