Tim rested his hand on the side mirror as he drove, then reached around to pat Chief, who was smiling with his tongue hanging out, enjoying the breeze in his face. ‘Pleased you were there, mate. You’re an excellent deterrent.’
Half an hour later, he parked the ute under the weeping branches of the silver gimlet tree and got out. He looked at the ground and saw the unfamiliar tyre tracks. He was right.
Walking in through the doorway, he put his esky on the bench and reached into the fridge for a beer. ‘Good thing I was just about to knock off, Mari,’ he said quietly. ‘If I’d had to leave before I was finished, I would’ve been really annoyed. Guess I’ll need to make a trip to Oakamanda and phone Spencer. He’ll be wanting to know about this fella.’
Marianne, as always, didn’t answer.
Tim jiggled up and down on his toes. The visitor had sent thrills of agitation though him. He’d never liked unexpected surprises—and he liked them even less since finding the body.
He sighed and picked up the photo of his wedding day and thought about the dream he’d had last night. He always dreamed of Marianne, but recently he’d dreamed of her almost every night in vivid colour and detail and he always woke feeling hollow and empty and dripping in sweat. These were the mornings he asked himself what he had to live for. Like Dee had suggested, he had options. One which would see him live more comfortably than in a tin shed. Maybe he should take up the mining company’s offer. He didn’t have anyone to leave the lease to and he already had more than enough money to see him out to the end of his days. But what would be do with himself? With the endless empty days which would stretch out in front of him if he didn’t have a job?
More importantly, how could he leave if there was even the remotest chance she might come back? She wouldn’t know how to find him if he left…As the years had passed he had begun to assume she was dead but he could never be absolutely sure. His need to know where she was and why she’d left had not dwindled since that first devastating day he’d realised she’d gone. But he had learned to live with the gaping hole in his chest.
Tim hadn’t realised she’d gone at first. Her clothes were untouched and there was dinner ready on the stove when he’d come home late that night. The bed had been empty and he’d called out to her a couple of times without reply. After eating his dinner, he’d gone to look further and found nothing. That was when the apprehension had begun to trickle through him. He’d stumbled back to the hut, calling her name; he’d heard the alarm in his own voice. Ripping open the small jewellery box which was hidden under a false floor, he stared inside. It was empty. And she never would have gone anywhere for a long period of time without the ivory and gold locket her father had made for her before he died. Seeing the box empty, he knew with certainly she’d gone. Left him.
Taking a swig of the beer, he went outside to watch the sun set and think about Marianne. And the body. It kept filtering into his thoughts at the most unexpected times, and every time it did he could smell the stench, hear the flies, and then his stomach would clench and he’d feel sick.
Needing to think about something else, he conjured up an image of Marianne. Exactly two weeks after he’d first heard the music across the dry and dusty road, he’d gone back to town and stood in front of the house again. He’d made sure it was at the exact same time. He didn’t want to miss the beautiful sound again. And there it was, drifting across the street, light and floaty. The notes made him think of clouds hovering in a vivid blue sky. Then the pace picked up and the tone became bouncy. Like butterflies, or wattle birds, flitting through the air.
Sitting on the kerb, Tim listened, spellbound until the music stopped and the front door opened. The girl with the long black hair and silver-blue eyes let out a younger girl, bade her goodbye, then went back inside.
Tim never knew where his courage had come from but he was forever grateful for it. His feet carried him across the road, through the garden and to the front door, where he knocked. Jiggling from foot to foot as he waited for her to open the door, he tried to work out what he was going to say.
‘Yes?’ the girl asked when she opened the door.
‘Um…I heard…’ The words dried up in his throat when he saw how beautiful she was up close.
‘You heard?’ She looked at him seriously, those silver eyes curious.
He swallowed. ‘I heard the music you were playing. It’s beautiful.’
She smiled and he saw she had a dimple in her right cheek. ‘It is the piano. I was playing Chopin to show my student how it should be performed. She likes to bang on the keys rather than skip lightly across them as she should.’
Tim now had no idea what to say.
‘I don’t know anything about music,’ he admitted finally.
‘Then your life will be much poorer than it should be. Come,’ she waved him inside. ‘Come and listen. Everyone should have music in their lives.’
Stuttering, he said he didn’t think he should come in. ‘It wouldn’t look right.’
‘My papa is inside. Come.’
He’d spent an hour listening to her play, watching mesmerised at the way her fingers had flown across the ivory and black keys. He hadn’t known the name for any part of this new thing called a piano, but in that hour he’d decided he wanted to know everything about it and her.
A low grumble shook the ground and brought Tim out of his thoughts. It was dark now and the mozzies were beginning to bite.
Chief growled.
‘Don’t fret, my friend, it’s just the mine blasting again. Though,’ he frowned, ‘usually they sound the siren first. I didn’t hear it this time. Maybe I was too deep in thought.’ He went back into the kitchen, putting the empty beer can in the bin.
Tim sat down on the edge of the single camp bed, made with nothing but a sleeping bag and mozzie net over the top. From under the grimy pillow he pulled a small notebook.
He looked at the cover, running his hand over it, trying to decide if he wanted to open it or not. Didn’t need to because he knew every word written in Mari’s hand. Really, he asked himself, do you want to feel the raw grief all over again?
Apparently he did, because without consciously opening the notebook he found himself looking at the beautiful cursive writing and reading her lyrical words.
Tonight the sun has kissed the leaves of the eucalypts as it has slowly sunk below the horizon. The fire is burning and I can hear the joyful laughter of the children as they duck and weave beneath the branches and bushes.
I asked the bush today about its secrets. But the land, it holds its mysteries close and you can be sure it will never tell. For a footprint which is once embedded in the soil disappears with a gust of wind and at once it was never there. You were never there.
The finches may flit from tree to tree and see every small thing that occurs, but they will never tell, neither will the broombushes even though they try. They rustle with the wind and try to talk, but are never understood.
This is why the land is the only one to confide in, for it will never tell.
Tim was never sure about this passage. What secrets did she think the bush knew? Was it her own or another’s? Or perhaps she just understood so much good and bad happened out here and the only witness was nature.
He put the book down, refusing to let the melancholy get any worse.
In the kitchen he lit the fire in the bricked-up fireplace and waited until the pan was hot enough. He cracked two eggs and opened a can of beans. When they were nearly cooked, he took his fork and stuck it through a piece of bread, holding it up to the coals so it toasted.
Chief pretended he was asleep in the doorway, but Tim knew he was waiting for a titbit or for him to spill something.
He piled his dinner onto a tin plate, got himself another beer, then went outside and sat in his chair, this time to eat and watch the moon rise.
Chapter 18
Dave gathered the piece of paper he’d found in the motel room and the forms Glen had filled out at the A
vis counter and sent them to forensics for fingerprinting.
He had woken in the middle of last night convinced the man down the mine was Glen Bartlett. He wasn’t sure why, but he was absolutely convinced. One of the older detectives he’d worked with had always told him to trust his instincts. He’d always tried, but sometimes, without the evidence to back him up, it was hard. Especially when he had to put a case together with the prospect of going to court and a lawyer tearing his work to pieces.
If John Doe and Glen Bartlett were one and the same, it was Dave’s job to link them with hard evidence, not his gut feeling.
Fingerprints seemed the obvious way, although Shannon had only managed to lift partials from the body. Claire had helped him print off two full facial images from the security video and he had faxed them through to Shannon to see if she could help with cranial or body recognition, but she had a backlog of post mortems to do and couldn’t look at the case for at least two days.
That was the trouble with policing: relying on other departments to get the necessary information. Everyone always thought their case was more important than anyone else’s and tried all sorts of tricks to get the information more quickly.
So much of investigative work was gathering evidence. Right now, all he had was a body, some small gold nuggets in a pocket and a missing hire car. From the outside, there was no reason for them to be linked. But in Dave’s mind they had to be connected.
‘Spencer,’ Dave said, turning to his partner, ‘just say the body we have down the mine is in fact Glen Bartlett. We need to match the two somehow. What would be your plan of attack?’
Spencer put down his pen and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I was thinking about this last night. That number you found on the piece of paper in the motel room, I’m sure there’s something important about it. Maybe a numberplate from the eastern states or a bank account number…’
Dave got up and paced the length of the room before stopping in front of the map. He placed a finger on the pin where the body had been found. His eyes flicked from side to side, looking for places where a car could have been hidden. There was plenty of bush around but a cave or large hole marked on the map would be worth investigating.
Then he saw it.
Going back to his desk, he grabbed his jotter where he’d written down the number: 7008-0514. His heart began to pound. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, hurrying back to the map. ‘Here. These numbers are the same as this lease. Are they an ID number like farms have location numbers? Is that it? Did he come to look at buying a lease?’
Spencer got up and came over. ‘That’s next to Tim’s place,’ he said. ‘Fractured Hill, it’s called. The old man who used to own it is dead. Need to get on to the Department of Mines to confirm who the owner is. I’ll ring. I’ve got a contact there.’
Spencer picked up the phone while Dave bounced on his toes, the thrill of the chase running through him.
He looked again at the distance between Tim’s place and Fractured Hill and wondered what the connection between Glen Bartlett and the lease would be. Why would he come all the way from Victoria to find ‘someone’ and why was the lease number in his room?
‘Right, thanks very much,’ Spencer said, finishing the phone call and hanging up. ‘Damn, not much there. The owner is dead now and it’s all caught up in probate, so they don’t have the name of who the land was willed to yet. It’s still in the hands of the lawyers.’ He paused, frowning. ‘You’ve run this Bartlett’s DL, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah, didn’t turn up anything. Just a speeding fine three years ago.’
Spencer changed tack. ‘Now the interesting thing about this is there’s a mining company getting around wanting to buy up small leases. I know they approached Tim Tucker. He gave me a call as a heads-up. When I went out to see China yesterday, he said the same thing. I think they’re trying to put together a package of land big enough to start an open-cut. To do that, they must have clear evidence there’s a lot more gold under the ground than the owners think.’
‘So what’s the next step?’
‘Let’s take a run out to Fractured Hill. Just to have a look around.’
The bumpy track, which really wasn’t wide enough to be called a road, wound in and out of large trees and bushes. It was a hilly area, different to the land Dave was familiar with around here.
‘The land out here, it goes for miles being flat,’ explained Spencer, ‘then you turn a corner and there’s a line of hills. The mining companies have created their own man-made hills as well. You see the smooth-sided ones with the young trees growing up? That’s the mines trying to regenerate land they’ve used or have planted out in accordance with their environmental policies.’
Dave nodded. The man-made hills were clearly different to the natural ones.
‘Hello, who’ve we got here?’ Spencer muttered, seeing a cloud of dust coming towards them. ‘Shouldn’t be too many people on this road. It only leads to Fractured Hill and there’s nothing out past that.’ He pulled over to the edge of the road and Dave held on as the ute bumped over some deep corrugations. ‘Well,’ he corrected himself, ‘there’s lots of country out there, but no leases pegged as far as I know.’
As the vehicle came into sight, Dave realised something. ‘It’s red,’ he said.
‘So it is,’ said Spencer. ‘So it is. And,’ he looked around to get his bearings, ‘we’re not that far from Oakamanda. There’s a turn-off just down there,’ he pointed, ‘which will get you into Oakamanda the back way. Interesting.’ He turned off the car and hauled himself out, planting himself in the middle of the road so the car had to stop.
The car pulled up and a man leaned out of window. ‘You blokes all right?’ he asked. He glanced at the four-wheel drive, which was unmarked, but his eyes widened. ‘You the cops?’ he asked.
‘What makes you say that?’ Spencer asked.
‘Flashing lights in the windscreen there.’ He nodded to the portable lights attached to the sun visor. ‘Anything you need a hand with?’
‘I was going to ask you the same thing,’ said Spencer. ‘This is not a road many people travel on. You looking for someone?’
The man frowned. ‘Yeah, actually I am. I was supposed to meet a bloke out here yesterday but he never showed. Thought I’d head out again today and see if he was here, but I must’ve missed him. Hard to make appointment times when people don’t have phones out here.’ His frustration was evident in his tone.
‘Oh yeah?’ Spencer leaned against the door of the vehicle. ‘I didn’t think anyone lived at Fractured Hill?’
‘Oh, I know no one lives there, but it’s where he asked me to meet him. Far be it for me to question him when he’s selling my company his land.’
Dave noticed Spencer’s posture stiffen slightly. ‘You’re looking to buy land?’
‘Not me. The mining company I work for.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Ross Pollard from HMA Mining.’
‘And who were you meeting out here?’
‘Well, I was supposed to meet Glen Bartlett. The deal was that he was going to sign the paperwork and I was going to give him a cheque. But he hasn’t fronted. Been trying to track him down, but he’s not at the hotel he’s staying at. He seems to have disappeared into thin air.’
Dave felt his heart kick up a notch.
‘Wait, wait, wait,’ Spencer said before Dave could get words out of his mouth. ‘Glen Bartlett owns Fractured Hill?’
‘Well, yeah.’ The man looked at him, puzzled.
‘And how do you know that?’
‘We were making enquiries, ringing and writing letters to owners and asking if they wanted to sell out. He contacted us and said he did.’
Dave narrowed his eyes. If the Department of Mines couldn’t confirm who the owner was, how could this Ross Pollard?
‘Now, that’s a bit interesting. We were under the impression Fractured Hill was part of the previous owner’s probate. What was your name again?’ Spencer questioned as he shooed a larg
e buzzing blowfly away from his head.
‘Ross Pollard. HMA Mining.’ He handed over his card. ‘And, yes, we know the land has been tied up. When Mr Bartlett rang us to accept our offer, he explained he was the executor for his late father’s estate and he would be selling the land. Seemed very keen to sell. I can’t work out why he hasn’t turned up.’
‘When did you see him last?’
‘I haven’t actually met him. All our negotiations have been done by phone and fax. He told me he had to come over to Barrabine for other reasons and he’d meet me here to sign everything.’
‘Are you in town for a while?’ Dave asked.
‘Yeah, I’m still trying to get a few more of the blokes with the small leases in this area to sign with us. We’re offering really good money, but they don’t seem to want to give them up.’
‘Had any other takers other than Glen Bartlett?’
‘I can’t tell you who, but there have been others.’
Spencer’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Tim Tucker?’ he asked.
‘Ah.’ Ross looked around, and Dave could see he was trying to work out how to answer. ‘Ah, no,’ he finally said. ‘No, he’s one who seems to be a little against the idea.’
Spencer scoffed. ‘I think “a little” might be an understatement, knowing Tim the way I do.’ He paused and looked around. ‘We might keep going out to Fractured Hill. If you find Glen, can you give me a call?’ He handed over his card.
‘My number’s there, but it’s not much good to you since I’m not in the office very often.’ He looked at them curiously. ‘Are you looking for Glen too?’
‘We’d certainly like to have a chat with him,’ Spencer confirmed.
‘I’ll ring you as soon as I find him,’ Ross promised. ‘Great. Oh, tell me, where are you staying in town?’ ‘The hotel near the golf course. Jaffa’s, I think it’s called.’ ‘I know it. Cheers, good to meet you. By the way,’ Dave said, ‘have you been driving around in the early mornings at all?’
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