Gunshot Road

by Adrian Hyland

  All three of them looked nervous: the police, I assumed, or the accident, or both. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘no need for you to see this.’

  I began to lead them back up to the road, but we’d only taken a couple of steps when a stern voice stopped us in our tracks.

  ‘Emily!’

  Cockburn.

  We halted. Danny looked around, anxiously. Having a cop within striking distance—particularly one of the Cockburn stamp—obviously rattled him. Nothing surprising there: in his world, when there was a cop within striking distance, generally you got struck.

  ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

  ‘Back to the car.’

  ‘I need you to get a statement from these people.’

  ‘Magpie and Meg.’

  He hesitated. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s their names. Magpie Jangala and Meg Brambles. And their grandson, Danny. He’s not much of a talker—won’t give you a word if you hassle him.’

  We carried on up to the road. I could feel Cockburn’s eyes burning into my back.

  Their stories, when I did eventually get them down, confirmed what I’d surmised: they’d been travelling north; like me, they’d seen signs of an accident, gone to help. The passenger had been thrown clear. The driver had had his last rites delivered by a camp—now dead—dog. Both men, like most other whitefellers in the district, worked for Copperhead Mines.

  The paramedics arrived, took away the passenger, name of Craig Flint, on a stretcher and Alan Feik, the driver, in a bag.

  A tow truck rocked up. A cheery young bloke jumped down from the cab, took a look at the dead dog and the bloody mess a few feet from it.

  ‘All that from the dog?’

  ‘The driver.’

  ‘Erk.’

  A back-up van arrived from town, Griffo at the wheel. The senior sergeant gathered us together. Bunter and Griffo would wrap up here, Cockburn, Harley and I would head on down to the Gunshot Road.

  The Gunshot Road. He made it sound like a punishment detail.

  As we climbed into the car, I realised how sticky with sweat I was. The heat was working itself deep into the contours of my body, down between the follicles. I checked my watch. Still only seven-thirty. That heatwave was coming in fast, a simmering, vicious bastard of a thing.

  I ran a finger beneath the collar of my shirt. At least we’d have air-conditioning.

  Five minutes later it broke down.

  Green Swamp Well

  I PEELED MY SWEATY thighs off the vinyl and climbed out of the Tojo, grateful for the change of scenery. The main scenery to date had been the back of Harley’s head. His neck a sweaty sausage, his scalp raw with a fine display of dandruff. He had twenty-two freckles and sunspots, numerous flakes of something white, possibly dried soap, teeth marks on his right ear and a skin cancer I would have warned him about if he’d been nicer to his dogs.

  Cockburn must have had internal air-conditioning: still razor-creased and groomed, his healthy sheen not a degree ruddier. He looked like he was stepping out for a night at the casino.

  Green Swamp Well was a collection of ramshackle whitewash buildings scattered around your typical outback pub. Wide verandas, shaded windows, gangrenous roofs buckling under the relentless Territory sun; denizens ditto.

  ‘Population density greater than I expected,’ remarked Cockburn.

  He had a point: the car park was chockers. Everything from the ubiquitous bush utes to a motor bike, from a Transit van to a mini-bus—the latter full of Asian tourists, judging by the agglomeration of skinny legs and spectacles visible under the kurrajong tree. One beige Toyota was charmingly adorned with a stuffed pig’s head lashed to the bull-bar. Most of the other vehicles were indistinguishable under a topcoat of red dust and amateur panel-beating, except for a stretch campervan labelled Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship and a hearse. Behind that, a cop car.

  ‘That’ll be Jerker,’ said Harley.

  ‘Jerker?’ Cockburn raised a brow.

  ‘Brad Jenkins, from the Break. This is his crime of the century—he won’t want to stuff it up.’

  The copper in question came marching out to greet us. Jerker was a large, goofy-looking guy with shire-horse feet and bloodhound jowls. So this was the poor bastard in charge of the cop shop at Breaking Point, eighty k’s down the highway. I wondered who he’d pissed off to get banished to the Break, but as the introductions approached I began to suspect it was an occupational health and safety issue for the boys in town. From five paces his breath smelled like refried sump oil.

  Whatever energy Jerker saved on flossing, he put into his enthusiasm for the job. As Harley had suggested, he’d refused to let anybody leave the roadhouse until the investigating team arrived.

  Not that there was going to be much of an investigation. By Jenkins’ account, two of the old drunks who hung around the pub had had a booze-fuelled brawl in the shack across the road; one of them had woken up dead.

  Cockburn didn’t sound impressed; an eyebrow flickered, a lip twitched. ‘You kept this crowd here for that?’ he asked, nodding at the veranda, where a motley mob of travellers looked keen to be on their way.

  Jenkins flushed. ‘Knew you’d want statements from everyone here.’

  ‘You had it figured for a yakuza hit?’ The senior sergeant glanced at the Asians under the kurrajong.

  ‘No sarge.’ He looked puzzled. ‘Figured it was the other feller in the shack.’

  Cockburn sighed. ‘We’ll get to that. Victim’s name?’

  Jerker had to consult the notebook. ‘Albert Ozolins…’

  A tall fellow in a clean white shirt wandered out of the pub. Another redhead, mostly freckles and spaghetti legs.

  ‘Thought you bastards’d never get here,’ he grinned.

  Cockburn wasn’t joining in the conviviality. ‘Who are you?’‘Undertakers.’

  ‘We were held up,’ Cockburn responded sharply.

  ‘We heard. Rush hour on the road to Bluebush. Stiffs everywhere. Appreciate it if you could get this one out of the way as quick as possible. Longer we hang around…’ He waved an arm; the heat, perhaps, or the flies; maybe it was tai chi.

  ‘Forensics up from Alice yet?’

  ‘Been and gone,’ said Jerker. ‘Didn’t hang around—another customer at Saddler’s Well, reckoned this one was a picnic by comparison. Said the report’ll be in your office before you are.’

  ‘Right,’ said Cockburn, also waving. Definitely a fly. The sticky little insects were something chronic. We were swinging and swishing for all we were worth but they still ended up in every orifice imaginable.

  He turned away, began leading us in the direction of the shack. ‘Nobody’s touched him?’

  ‘Just forensics,’ said Jenkins. ‘Oh—and the priest.’

  Cockburn stopped. ‘Priest?’

  Jenkins tugged at an ear lobe, sensed danger. ‘Missionary feller. Wanted to give the last rites. Or whatever.’

  I glanced back at the campervan. Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship. Not exactly a priest, but Jenkins didn’t strike me as an expert on matters ecclesiastical.

  Cockburn gave him the granite stare.

  ‘Nobody goes near a crime scene until I give the all-clear. Is that understood?’

  Jenkins studied the ground. ‘Sorry boss.’

  ‘This one sounds clear cut, but even so…’

  The constable led us out in the direction of a hovel at the foot of a craggy red bluff, a couple of hundred yards south of the pub.

  The shack was constructed, appropriately enough, of blood-wood beams and rusty corrugated iron, its starkness a sharp contrast to the firebright cliffs behind. Alongside the building was a carport made of steel rails. Scrap metal, perhaps, from the old Gunshot Mine. In the carport was a battered blue jeep.

  The cabin seemed to be vibrating. A disturbing hum rattled my eardrums. As we drew closer I realised it was an effect generated by the cloud of flies cutting through the air. They crashed into the screens, ripped in a
nd out of the open door. I spluttered and spat one from my mouth. Wondered where it had been.

  I went up the steps, then paused, a peculiar chill stealing over my heart. I remembered my ominous feeling on the way down, the sense of something dangerous beyond the horizon.

  Cockburn noticed my discomfort, showed a glint of cold pleasure. ‘Better get used to it, Emily. Won’t be the last body you have to look at.’

  ‘Won’t be the first, either.’ I pushed my way past. This bloke was getting on my goat.

  In and out of the shack

  A MOUND IN THE centre of the room: a grey tarpaulin, big enough to cover the body but not the crusted black pool on the floor. An eruption of flies beat up from the sludge as Cockburn drew back the tarp.

  I flinched, squinted and looked down. A bearded old man stared up at me with startled eyes, as if death had taken him by surprise. Not that there’s anything unusual in that, I reflected. It doesn’t usually send you an sms saying Pick u up 2moz 7.30.

  His skin was desiccated leather, his hands filthy, his nails encrusted with crimson dirt. The face looked like somebody had jumped on it: a deflated football fringed with snow. Not a face I recognised, but there was a prickling familiarity about it.

  ‘What was his name again?’ I asked Jerker.

  ‘Ozolins.’

  However Mr Ozolins had looked in his prime, his distinguishing feature right now was the geological hammer embedded in the base of his throat.

  The flies were drawn to it as well.

  Cockburn studied the body, his face impassive. He put his bag on the floor, pulled out a video camera. Began sweeping the room.

  ‘Bloke who did him was flaked out on the bed over there,’ said Jenkins, nodding at a wire bunk.

  Shit, I thought, staring at the bloody mess on the floor. He did that, then went and had a lie down? Made himself a nice cup of tea as well, did he?

  ‘Feller from the pub come in and found em.’

  While Cockburn did his thing, I did mine: poked my nose in, took a look around the old man’s shack. It was better than looking at his corpse.

  I made a mental note of the late Mr Ozolins’ worldly possessions: broken furniture, scattered bottles, a blue kero lamp. A frypan on the stove, a chop marooned in a pool of congealed fat. His fridge a Coolgardie safe. A filing cabinet, its drawers half open.

  Nothing out of the ordinary there, but the bookshelves—planks on bricks—held some surprising stuff.

  ‘Well read old bloke,’ I commented, casting an eye across the spines: The Geology of Central Australia, The Proterozoic Bluebush Province, Twidale’s Geomorphology. Most of the books were of a geological age themselves. A stack of yellowing maps and cross-sections sprawled out onto the floor. There was, as well, the odd battered volume from other branches of science: physics, engineering. Newton’s Principia nestled between Poincaré and The Origin of Species.

  Cockburn glanced up from his camera, his face expressionless. ‘We come all this way for some overdue library books?’

  I glanced at the floor directly in front of the bookshelf.

  ‘More dust on the floor than on the books themselves.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Looks like somebody flicked through em.’

  ‘Killer probably wanted something to read in bed.’

  I examined the filing cabinet. Again, mostly geology: old army surplus notebooks stored in blue folders. I pulled one of them out. Sketches and diagrams, notes, maps, cross-sections.

  On top of the cabinet, a Geiger counter, some bottles of acid, a Freiberg compass. In the corner of the room was a pile of ancient wine boxes. I opened a couple, found dust-covered rocks and minerals, most of the labels faded, fallen and spread across the floor.

  I was struck by the lack of any signs of a personal life: no photographs, no mementos, no keepsakes, no items of any obvious sentimental value.

  Only…there, on a dirty dresser beside the bed, next to the tube of Deep Heat: a bare patch.

  Sure enough, fallen between the dresser and the bed, a small framed photograph. I dug it out: two little girls, mop haired, blonde, impish grins. Another older one, dark haired, sombre. A surprisingly recent shot. The old man might have lived here on his own, but he had somebody somewhere.

  Cockburn put away the gear, joined Jenkins, who was on crowd control—he was the crowd—out on the veranda.

  ‘So you’re holding this other feller over at the pub?’

  ‘Nowhere else to put him, sarge.’

  ‘Who’s keeping an eye on him?’

  ‘Couple of Transport and Works blokes. Don’t worry, he’s going nowhere.’

  ‘What was his name again?’

  ‘Petherbridge.’

  ‘And he’s admitted that he did it?’

  ‘Well…’

  Exasperation rippled across Cockburn’s face. ‘Well what?’

  ‘He hasn’t said he didn’t do it.’

  ‘I haven’t said I didn’t do it either.’

  ‘They had a brawl at the pub—a dozen witnesses saw em havin a go at each other. Ozolins came back here, Petherbridge followed. Admits they went another round. Says he passed out on the bed. Woke up when the publican come in.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Cockburn lifted his eyes to the heavens. ‘Tell the undertaker he can get it out of here.’

  As we walked over to the roadhouse, I glanced back at the shack and its surrounds. Rusting car parts, blue coiled fencing wire, shredded tyres. A broken wheelbarrow, shovels and picks. A rubbish dump, mostly bottles and bones, tins.

  And to the west of the shack, up against the hills, a rock formation that didn’t look right.

  A slippage from the cliffs?

  ‘What’s with the rocks?’ I asked Jenkins.

  ‘Old bloke was crazy. Used to be a prospector. Spent his days out there, rearranging his bloody rock garden.’

  ‘He built all that himself?’

  ‘Suppose so. Been at it for weeks. Months. See him out here sometimes, muttering away, shifting things around.’

  ‘Must have been a fit old bloke,’ I commented.

  Cockburn gave the rock pile a moment’s consideration. ‘Or a determined one. Crazy determined. Had a feller once, over Queensland. Same thing. Spend all morning digging a hole, afternoon filling it in again. Same hole. One day he decided it was finished. Jumped in, blew his brains out. Son-in-law said it was an accident. Told him, yeah; life’s an accident.’

  I glanced at him, mildly surprised.

  We made our way to a crusty dwelling behind the pub.

  A concrete blackfeller beside the garden path raised a spear at us. I gave him a sisterly wave as we filed past.

  A weird little dog, a cross between a shitzu and a toilet brush with pop eyes and jutting lower teeth, confronted us at the door, tail erect. Confronted me, more to the point, clearly unimpressed by the colour of my hide. The animal had a growl like an electric toothbrush and gave it to me, full throttle.

  A woman came to the door: body and dress featureless, her face thinner than strained tea. She called the dog away, distracted. Ran her fingers through her hair.

  ‘Mrs Redman sarge,’ said Jenkins.

  ‘June,’ she said; the vowel squeezed past her sinuses and came out as flat as the dog’s face. ‘Me and me husband own the place.’

  June led us through to the kitchen, where two monstrous Works blokes towered over a stocky old man who sat contemplating a mug of what might have been wormwood.

  ‘We’ll be off then mate,’ mumbled the lesser of the monsters, climbing to his feet.

  ‘Good luck, Wireless,’ said the other.

  Wireless? The name Petherbridge hadn’t meant anything to me, but Wireless sure as hell did.

  Wireless and the Paradox

  THE OLD MAN LOOKED up at us and I recognised him at once. I’d known him when I was a kid. Nowadays my father ran his own gold mine out at Burnt Shirt Gorge, but back then he was a prospector-cum-station worker, and Wireless was one of the eccentrics on
the periphery of his circle. The nickname came from the fact that once you got him going he never stopped talking.

  He’d shut up now, though. And shrivelled, it seemed. An impression enhanced by the after-image of the Works titans.

  Truth be told, Wireless had never been the most pleasant of my father’s acquaintances. He was one of your more theoretical bush bullshit artists, as likely to strut his stuff on half-arsed philosophy or layman’s particle physics as he was on some putative nugget or lost reef. And cranky with it, old Wireless. He was always trying to best you in an argument. If he didn’t manage it he’d flare up with a readiness that suggested an underlying insecurity, a suspicion that somewhere along the road he’d fucked up—taken a wrong fork. Or impaled himself on it.

  From the look of him now, the fuck-ups had coalesced, big time. Arguing with your fellow no-hopers was one thing, slamming geo-picks into their throats was another. He was tapping on the table, chewing the rim of his cup, staring at the tablecloth with red rubber eyes. He was as bald as a bullet, with a blunt nose, a drooping jaw and a serious shortfall in the dental department. He looked like a snapping turtle that had lost its snap.

  Cockburn sat opposite, pulled out a notebook. ‘Just for the record, your name is John Vincent Petherbridge?’

  ‘Wireless,’ I interposed.

  The senior sergeant looked up at me, his blue eyes querulous. ‘What?’

  ‘That’s what his mates call him. Don’t we, Wireless?’

  The prospector’s death mask was replaced by a quizzical flicker.

  Cockburn’s disdain was snowballing—about the only thing that was, given the weather. ‘Acquainted with all the local quality, are we, Emily?’

  ‘Grew up round here, mate.’ He arched an eyebrow. ‘We did tend to know each other.’ I put a hand out in the old man’s direction. ‘Emily Tempest, Wireless. Jack’s daughter.’