Diamond Sky Trilogy Box Set: Books 1-3

by David Clarkson

  Emmy detected a hint of bitterness in the policeman’s voice.

  ‘That has no relevance here,’ said Mike.

  ‘He tried to pick her up,’ added Lucas. ‘She knocked him back...naturally. I would say that counts as being emotionally compromised. Hence, any interrogation should be done by me.’

  ‘What the good policeman has failed to mention is that he is not exactly without a connection to the witness either. She was staying with him at the station. Lord knows what scandalous deeds the pair of them got up to.’

  Emmy was struggling both to take in this news and also trying to figure out what was wrong with Mike’s words. Everything about him was off somehow. The way he looked, the way he talked, he almost reminded her of...

  She shook the crazy thoughts out of her head. She was suffering from grief and it was causing her to dwell on all manner of ridiculous notions. What she needed to focus on was the fact that somebody had been with Armareth when he had come to the observatory. Maybe this person could explain why he chose this time to turn her life upside down.

  ‘Let me speak to her,’ she said, not quite sure what she was volunteering for.

  ‘That’s out of the question,’ said Mike.

  ‘I think she should do it,’ said Lucas.

  The other two looked at him, not quite believing what he had said.

  ‘Really?’ asked Emmy.

  ‘Why not?’ replied Lucas, to Mike rather than her. ‘She knows the history of the case, which is more than you can say.’

  Mike did not reply to the jibe. In fact, he seemed to almost shrink before Emmy’s eyes and no longer even tried to argue with the policeman. He did not appear to be fully in control of his own senses. It was as if his body was there, but his mind was somewhere else.

  ‘Where is this girl of yours then?’ Emmy asked Lucas.

  ‘You want to speak to her now?’ he replied, somewhat bemused.

  ‘The sooner we get this over with the better.’

  She turned to Mike. He was distant, lost in his thoughts.

  ‘End of the hallway,’ he replied, almost absentmindedly.

  ‘Do we need to record this?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s not necessary,’ said Lucas. ‘We will both be with you.’

  ‘No,’ she said; with a conviction that surprised even herself. ‘I am doing this alone. How else will I be able to earn her trust?’

  Again, Lucas did not object and the other man had retreated into himself entirely. Emmy knew that something was definitely wrong with the soldier, but that would have to wait for now. She had almost forgotten about the complication in his astral journal before they had all learned of her grandfather’s death. It was clear that he was still suffering from shifting consciousness so abruptly.

  Lucas waited for Emmy in the corridor, whilst Mike made an excuse about having to report back to base and left. The girl was not surprised when she saw Emmy enter the room; she actually looked relieved. She was also just as cute as Emmy remembered. Dressed casually in tight jeans and a white, off the shoulder blouse, she did not look like an accomplice to murder.

  ‘Do you remember me?’ Emmy asked.

  ‘Of course,’ replied the girl. ‘You don’t know how relieved I am to see a friendly face. Nobody is telling me anything. I do not even know why I am here. First a man is gunned down right in front of me and then I am locked up as if I were the one who pulled the trigger. All I did was give a grieving old man a lift in my car.’

  Emmy could see the dried stain of prior tears. It did not occur to her that the girl would be grieving too and for Armareth of all people.

  ‘How well did you know...the deceased?’

  Emmy found that she could not bring herself to say HIS name and look this frightened girl in the eye.

  ‘He was a mechanic and I had a busted car. First I thought he was just some pathetic, washed up alcoholic, but over the last few days, I started to bond with him. I could see that he was hurting. I guess you know more about that than me.’

  ‘Why would you think that?’

  The girl looked back at her, confused.

  ‘Well?’ added Emmy, impatiently this time.

  ‘I just thought that...’

  ‘You thought what?’

  ‘I thought that you and he were related somehow. I mean, he had that picture of you and it was clear that his grief had something to do with why he came here today.’

  Emmy’s eyes widened. All of her fears that David Armareth was deliberately stalking her were confirmed. The times when he came to the observatory, in cars borrowed from customers, and sat watching, waiting; it had been for her. Her grandfather tried to ease her anxiety by claiming that it was he who Armareth stalked, but it really was her all along.

  ‘Where is this picture now?’ she asked.

  ‘I guess it’s still in the garage where he left it. I wanted to ask him about it, but it never seemed appropriate.’

  ‘Describe it to me.’

  ‘There’s not much to say really. You look just like you do now, albeit happier. You’re smiling and it’s a sunny day. The man next to you is smiling too. I assumed you were a couple.’

  ‘Tell me more about the man. Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t know. That was the question I never had the courage to ask. He looked a little like Davo. I thought maybe it was his son. Have you ever been out with his son?’

  Emmy started to feel her anxiety return. She had many questions, but these were not the answers she envisaged. The only way she was going to be able to begin to understand the situation was to see this photograph with her own eyes.

  ‘He had no son,’ she told the girl. ‘As far as I know, he had no family of any kind. Men like him are loved by nobody as they are incapable of love themselves.’

  The girl was visibly hurt by Emmy’s words. Clear, delicate tears began to retrace the steps of their forebears. It pained Emmy to see the girl suffer in this way and it was made worse by the fact that she was the cause.

  No, she was not the cause; that honour, as always, fell to David Armareth.

  ‘I’m sorry you have to hear it this way, but believe me when I tell you that whatever you thought you knew about that man; you were wrong. He got what he deserved.’

  The girl’s grief increased until she was on the brink of falling apart. She took quick, sharp breaths as if trying to stop herself from hyperventilating.

  ‘How can you speak about him in such a way? He was a human being and he has just been murdered?’

  ‘No!’ Emmy shouted back at her. ‘He is the one who committed murder. My grandfather is now dead because of him.’

  This time the girl did not answer. She just sat on the edge of her bed weeping. Emmy felt bad, but there was nothing else she could have said. It was the truth; David Armareth was a killer. She turned to leave and when she was just at the doorway, the girl called out to her.

  ‘I know your name,’ she said. ‘You thought I would never guess, but I did.’

  Emmy turned her head to look back before leaving.

  ‘You know nothing about me.’

  She turned back and as her hand touched the door handle she heard the girl speak again. Only one word was uttered, but it was a word that the girl should not have known. Emmy did not look back again. She walked out of the room and closed the door behind her. Without even noticing it, she was crying too.

  Chapter 27

  The silence could not have lasted more than a couple of minutes, but to Lucas it seemed like an age. He wanted to break it, but could not think of what to say. Emmy had just lost her grandfather and now everything she worked towards was also in jeopardy. The problem was that he really did need to speak to her. With the professor gone, she was the only one who could possibly figure out what was happening to his town and help do something about it before it was too late.

  As the observatory disappeared from sight in the rear view mirror, she let out a sigh of relief. He knew just how she felt. When the professor was in control
, it had always been an imposing, yet inspiring place. It was a seat of great learning and a beacon to scientific progress. Now it was little more than a fort, a secure prison under control of the military.

  ‘She knows my name,’ said Emmy.

  ‘Huh?’ replied Lucas.

  The pickup truck was passing the field by the billabong. Despite his own experience of the place being very different to the one suffered by Ned, Lucas still felt nervous as he scanned the countryside for signs of the remarkable animals. As such, he was slow to latch onto his passenger’s attempts to initiate the conversation that he had previously hoped for.

  ‘The girl that brought HIM to the observatory. What was she called?’

  ‘Lucy.’

  His thoughts were still focused outside of the car. He wondered if the poison that turned Wally into a killer was the same that made David Armareth kill too. If it had already spread from the town to the observatory then he may be too late to stop whatever it was.

  ‘Lucy knew my name.’

  ‘I expect she heard it whilst she was up there. Maybe the captain told her.’

  ‘You don’t understand. She knew my name. The only people I have given that information to are you and Charlie. I know for a fact that he has never spoken to her.’

  She fixed him with her sharpest gaze.

  ‘Are you accusing me of something?’

  ‘I’m not accusing you. I was just wondering how well you know this girl. Is it true that she was staying with you at the station?’

  ‘It’s not like that. Her room at the Fox was burnt to cinders. She has nowhere else to go. I couldn’t leave her to sleep on the street.’

  She relaxed her stare and looked out of the passenger side window.

  ‘You must keep a lot of sensitive information at the station. Has Val finished computerising your records yet?’

  ‘She did all of that months ago. Everything is backed up and securely password protected.’

  ‘And the paper originals?’

  ‘Obviously, we kept most of the files. Sometimes it is more convenient to have a hard copy close to hand.’

  ‘So I take it that my file is still sitting at the back of an unlocked filing cabinet somewhere.’

  ‘All sensitive information is kept under lock and key. But to answer your question – yes, your file is still held on record.’

  She shook her head with frustration.

  ‘Jesus, Lucas, don’t you see what has happened here? This girl was clearly in cahoots with Armareth. She obviously looked at my file to find out information for him. If you had taken the stalker warnings more seriously...’

  He knew why she had broken off mid sentence. To accuse him of being lax with data protection at the station was one thing, but even grief could not make her accuse him of contributing to her grandfather’s death.

  ‘You have her all wrong, you know,’ he said. ‘Any relationship she had with Armareth was purely out of sympathy and I doubt very much that he would have talked to her about you. She’s a good person. She’s recently lost somebody close to her too.’

  Emmy looked at him, but did not ask the question.

  ‘Her father died a little over a week ago,’ he continued. ‘She’s grieving too. It’s not right that she is being kept like a prisoner by that idiot of a soldier. As soon as I get back to my office, I am going to contact the courts and petition for her release.’

  They were now on the outskirts of town and Lucas drove them down a side road to get to the garage. Emmy still did not know about the other murders and he did not want to burden her with that knowledge until after they had gotten this visit over with.

  The door to the workshop was still open. Lucas got out of the truck first and walked around to open the other door for Emmy.

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ he asked her.

  ‘I need to know,’ she replied. ‘If he has been keeping a photo of me, I think I have that right. Besides, I want to know who this man is that is supposedly in the picture with me.’

  They walked inside together and let their eyes do the searching, whilst remaining standing in the centre of the room.

  ‘Do not touch anything without speaking to me first,’ said Lucas. ‘Those Americans have no jurisdiction down here, but this is still a crime scene. My crime scene.’

  She nodded, but then completely ignored his request by going straight over to a cabinet by the office and picking up a framed photograph.

  ‘Do you ever do as you are told?’ he asked.

  ‘Not if it’s by a man,’ she replied.

  Knowing the futility in trying to argue with her, he simply followed her over to have a look at the picture for himself.

  ‘Is this the one?’ he asked.

  ‘I guess so,’ she replied.

  She seemed confused and what little colour had been in her face, paled further. Lucas took the photo frame from her.

  ‘This isn’t you.’

  ‘It is HIM though, isn’t it? I’ve never seen him so young, but the eyes are unmistakable. How could I not have known about this; why did Pops not tell me?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I think this picture does have something to do with why he was watching you and why he did what he did today. I think you should go back to the car whilst I check out the rest of this place.’

  ‘No, whatever is here, it concerns my family and I want to see it.’

  She took back the photograph and entered the office. He hurried to keep pace with her. He noticed the calendar before she did. The date was clearly marked in red ink and he thought this could be used as evidence of pre-meditation in the crime. Emmy had still not seen it and was looking through the track listings on a CD case.

  ‘I’ve seen enough,’ she said. ‘Will you take me home?’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied.

  Before leaving, he shut all of the doors and put up a closed notice in the window. They then returned to the truck and he drove them back the same way they had come. When he was about halfway to the observatory, he turned onto the dirt track leading to the billabong.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Emmy. ‘Why aren’t you taking me home?’

  ‘There is something I need you to see,’ he told her. ‘Before your grandfather died, he was helping me with one of my cases. It may even have something to do with why he was killed.’

  ***

  Bradley found Mike in what was previously the professor’s study. It was the same room in which he had come across the old man’s body just hours earlier. The corpse had been removed, but an air of death still pervaded throughout the room. There was also a faint smell of vomit.

  ‘Are you alright?’ he asked, whilst remaining standing in the doorway, not wishing to enter the actual room.

  ‘Of course, I’m alright,’ his friend replied. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  The captain sat behind a large oak desk. His arms rested on the wooden surface of the desk and there was a wastepaper basket down beside his feet. A smear of fresh vomit was visible around the rim of the bin.

  ‘I’m just not sure that you should be in here,’ said Bradley. ‘It is a crime scene, after all and well; it’s also a bit creepy.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I haven’t touched anything. I was just taking a look around and I felt like I needed to sit down.’

  There was an open file on the desk. He could have been mistaken, but Bradley did not think it had been left out earlier when he discovered the body.

  ‘Maybe it’s best if we leave this place for forensics. Were you given a time for when the team is going to arrive?’

  ‘Team?’

  ‘I assume base is going to send in some people to clean this mess up. Hell, we aren’t trained to deal with this kind of shit. What did they say when you called?’

  ‘I don’t know. What I mean is; they didn’t give an exact time. I guess they’ll send someone over in the next few days.’

  ‘Well, I hope it’s sooner rather than later. I cannot wait to get away from this
place. Is there anything you want me to do in the meantime? I could talk to one of the witnesses.’

  ‘Speak to the Aboriginal guy. I doubt he saw anything important. If he has nothing to add to the investigation, you can send him home. The girl’s situation is a little more complicated, but I’ve decided to release her into Lucas’s custody. Emmy already spoke to her and she seems clean.’

  ‘Emmy; since when have you trusted her judgement?’

  ‘Just do it, lieutenant. And I would also prefer it if you didn’t disturb me for the rest of the day. I’m still feeling the effects from that astral journey this morning.’

  ‘Whatever you say, captain.’

  He stepped over the broken remains of the door and as he left the study he could hear sounds of retching behind him. It was obvious that Mike was not okay. Everything about the captain suggested that he was far from his usual self. In fact, to Bradley, it seemed as if his friend and superior officer had been poisoned.

  ***

  ‘This is a joke, isn’t it?’ said Emmy.

  ‘It’s not a joke,’ replied Lucas. ‘You have to believe me that something is not right with these animals. They possess almost human-like intelligence.’

  She looked at the small kangaroo in front of them as it grazed on the spinifex. It was beautiful, elegant, but nothing more than it should be. There was nothing strange and unusual about it that she could see at all.

  ‘This is really not funny.’

  ‘Like I said; it’s not a joke. You should have seen what happened to Ned’s ute. They bashed up his car and drowned his dog. He’s an experienced hunter and did not manage to get off a single shot. It scared him real bad.’

  ‘I thought you said that they were nice super kangaroos. You could at least try and make your story consistent.’

  ‘He threatened them, what were they supposed to do? Besides, Ned and I are not the only ones. Lucy had an encounter as well; on Saturday night. It was a good thing too, because if she had been in her room she would have been burned alive. That was the night of the fire.’