Gunshot Road

by Adrian Hyland

  But there was something else there, something as elusive and tricky as a speck of gold in a gravel wash. Sorrow? Not guilt, surely. What did he have to feel guilty about?

  He stepped back, nodded at the waiting car. ‘You’ll want to be on your way then?’

  ‘That’s the general idea, but technically we’re still on hospital grounds, so if those Ferrero Rochers have got my name on them…’

  ‘Must be getting better,’ said Jojo. ‘Her mind’s moving on to lower things.’

  Wishy smiled, presented me with the chocolates, added the flowers with as much aplomb as most men of his ilk could muster in such a situation.

  ‘Why thank you.’ I buried my face in the bouquet, breathed a heady blend of bougainvillea and gardenia. ‘From your own garden?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Say hello to those gorgeous girls of yours for me,’ I threw back at him as we walked out the door. ‘Tell em I’ve been polishing up my bowling—be back for the rematch before they know what hit em. And thank Loreena for the flowers.’

  We left him looking lost in the foyer.

  ‘He’ll have to wait a while to do that,’ Jojo commented as we walked towards the Tojo.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Thank Loreena.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘She’s in the States.’

  I almost dropped the chocolates.

  ‘As in United?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What the hell’s she doing there?’ I was more than a little put out that Jojo, just back from a spell out bush, seemed to know more of what was going on round town than I did. That was Jojo, though; he had a way of gaining instant trust and stumbling onto information that your more spiky individual—me, for instance—had to work for.

  ‘The oldest girl…’

  ‘Simone.’

  ‘She and her mother flew out yesterday. Gone to Seattle for an operation.’

  My chest tightened. A sense of foreboding reared.

  ‘What sort of operation?’

  ‘A transplant.’

  ‘A trans…what of?

  ‘Her bone marrow.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  ‘I suspect it means leukaemia.’

  ‘Oh, that poor girl. I knew there was something wrong.’

  We climbed aboard, but I was too stunned by the information I’d just received to do anything other than sit there and find what comfort I could in the familiar seat, shaped to my body, the eucalypt and bougainvillea smells that permeated the vehicle.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ I asked.

  ‘Wishy’s was one of the places I called on when I was running round looking for you this morning. Found myself being interrogated by a rather commanding little person called—Tiger Lily, was it?’

  ‘It wasn’t, but it is now.’

  ‘She filled me in. Would have given me the full medical history if her father hadn’t joined us. He wasn’t saying much…’

  ‘Never seems to…’

  ‘…but he’s flying out himself, tomorrow morning.’

  That all made sense; it explained Simone’s wasted appearance, her relentless personality, the trouble I’d sensed brewing beneath that solid family surface. I liked that girl a lot, but the news of her illness left me with a stronger sense of unease than it should have.

  We sat there, corralled by silence. The first time we’d been alone since…

  Jojo put an arm around my shoulder, his face up close to mine. ‘Grim times,’ he said.

  ‘You can say that again. My god, what she must be going through.’

  ‘I meant you.’

  ‘Oh. That…’

  ‘Can’t say how sorry I am about this whole horrible business, Em.’

  I felt the sadness, the shame, come biting at the borders. I didn’t want to go there. Worried I’d never make it back.

  ‘My fault,’ I said curtly. ‘I fucked up.’

  ‘We all fuck up, time to time. Don’t usually pay a price like that.’

  I found some skin among the whiskers, gave it a kiss. ‘It’s okay, Jojo. Thanks, but I can handle it.’

  He got the message, backed off and backed out. Headed for the Three Mile.

  We pulled up at the shack, and I spotted a lick of smoke drifting in from the scrub alongside it.

  ‘Visitor,’ Jojo said.

  I climbed down. Under a tree, a shimmering, bluesmoke fire. On the other side of it, a square-browed woman in a turquoise dress.

  I walked towards her. She looked up through the haze, her eyes as luminous as a worn-out horse’s flanks.

  ‘Hey sister.’

  ‘Hazel.’

  I sat beside her. ‘Where’d you spring from?’

  ‘Jojo come out to Moonlight and got me.’

  ‘Trust Jojo. Never stay still, that feller.’

  ‘I was comin in anyway.’

  ‘Why?’

  She took my hand. ‘Knew you was in trouble Emmy.’

  ‘How?’

  Her silence said more than most speech.

  My head found its way to her lap, my tears onto her dress. She ran her fingers through my hair, her palms along my spine. The smoke stung, but it was a good, invigorating feeling. I looked at the base of the fire, saw melting spinifex rosin. A healing agent. Like the bush oils she worked into my temples, the songs she whispered in my ear.

  ‘I’ll get over it, Haze.’

  ‘Dunno that you ever get over it, Em. Not all the way. Carry it round forever. But you get by. Jeez, we’re all carryin something.’

  Strings of thick black hair drifted across her forehead. Her arms felt like a blanket round my body, then they were a blanket. I looked up, saw Jojo kneeling alongside us. He’d covered us with an old Wagga rug. He stoked the fire, kissed my forehead.

  It’s not the smoke, I reflected as I floated away; it’s not the rosin or the oil, or even the songs.

  It’s the love that bears them.

  Fire dreams

  SOMEWHERE IN THE HALF-LIGHT I felt my body being hoisted into the air. I opened my eyes: Jojo carrying me in through the back door. He laid me on the bed, pulled a sheet up over my shoulders.

  I drifted off to sleep, but it was still a dark, troubled experience, shot through with red and blue nightmares. I knew I’d hit rock bottom when I found myself driving in panic across a vast, sun-racked plain, hotly pursued by…by a wildfire, of all things.

  I was at the wheel of my little white Hilux. I sped away, then glanced back: a sudden shift in the wind, and the fire was in front of me, its red glare blasting through the windscreen, blinding my eyes, burning my lips.

  I swung round to the west, but it was there as well. Only then did I realise that the fire wasn’t spreading of its own accord: there was a man racing across its front. He held a flaming brand in one hand and was touching it to the spinifex, torching it as he ran.

  Paisley? I thought for one gut-shuddering moment. But no, the runner was black, his bare body glistening with goanna grease and sorry scars.

  Tiny animals—dunnarts and geckoes, bearded dragons—scuttled and fled before the inferno; birds of prey circled above, dived through the smoke and picked them off with a fearful screeching.

  I wheeled around, fled to the east, but it was no use: I was surrounded. Choking black clouds blotted the sky, savage light splintered and flicked through the cab. Something—someone?—crashed onto the roof, began hammering wildly.

  I woke up, gasping with fear and shuddering with a sudden insight: this business wasn’t over.

  It wasn’t over. Oh Christ—what did that mean?

  I recognised the fire man running through my dream: Andulka. And I saw what he stood for: a refusal to compromise, to accept anything less than the truth.

  Emily Tempest, I told myself, you compromised. You settled for the slipshod, the second rate, the half-arsed.

  I’d tried to tell myself I’d solved the mystery of Doc’s murder, but that was bullshit, I knew. Truth was, I’d
been hammered once, was scared to get up in case I was hammered again.

  Not good enough.

  A volley of unanswered questions ricocheted through my mind.

  Had Doc really been murdered because he’d stumbled onto a hidden ganja plantation? If that was all there was to it, why had the Snowball files been removed? Would Paisley have hung around to go through Doc’s cabinet on the off chance that somebody would make a connection between his little horticultural enterprise and an obscure geological site out west?

  Paisley’s final words came slithering in, past my mental blocks: ‘As if they didn’t warn…’ What was that all about? As if who hadn’t warned him?

  Was there something about Dingo Springs I didn’t know? Doc had inveigled Noel Redman into taking out a mineral exploration licence on the site: in his mind, doubtless it was to ensure unfettered access for his research, but what if he’d stumbled across something else, something somebody was willing to kill for?

  That line of enquiry introduced a range of options. Redman himself, for one; he stood to gain if there was anything of value on the site. There were other incriminating factors: it was Redman who discovered the body, he’d had a gutful of the geriatric geologist, he’d jumped like a prodded bull when I asked about the leases.

  Then there was the landslide. Stiffy had raced up the hill just before the explosion—had he been running to his boss? Or had he been running at someone else, doing his little watchdog number?

  Even the Reverend Bodycombe wasn’t above suspicion. There’d been ongoing antagonism between him and Doc. He’d disappeared into his van around the time of the murder. And he was a sneaky bastard if ever I saw one—an opinion which, I had to admit, may have been tainted by my general policy of never trusting anybody with crosses on the collar.

  And there was one other person floating around the peripheries of my mind: Wishy.

  Nothing I could put my finger on, but he’d been acting strangely. He hadn’t told me he’d gone out west with his brother. He was Doc’s heir; and, as he himself had admitted, Doc could be the most maddening man alive. And his daughter, Simone: was there a motive there? He wasn’t exactly on Struggle Street, but sending her off into the money-grubbing clutches of the American health system would have racked up some serious bills.

  And finally, running like a ground bass beneath these speculations, there was the image of Doc’s rock formation: I had no idea of how it fitted into the dark events of recent weeks, but I couldn’t rid myself of the suspicion—the premonition, almost—that it did. I could almost sense Doc somewhere near, reaching out, trying to tell me something.

  Those frenzied seconds of the landslide flashed through my mind. Had its purpose been to get rid of me—or of Jet and her sculpture? Had Doc’s killer known it was the key to the mystery of his death?

  A fire ceremony, a broken song, a dead geologist, a landslide, a teenager with a lethal illness, a sculpture of stone and wood. Disparate elements, like planets orbiting a star.

  But what—or who—was the star?

  How did they connect? Why couldn’t I escape the suspicion that they did?

  A further insight slipped in, uninvited, unannounced. Unwanted, really, because it chilled me. There was a single mind at work here, an invisible force, manipulating, keeping the plates spinning, setting traps, unleashing feints and diversions, staying a step ahead of me.

  I groaned, worn out, overwhelmed by the sheer effort of thinking, exhausted by the last few days. I rolled back onto the pillow and buried my head in my arms, the explosive footsteps from the nightmare still ringing through my head.

  I was wide awake now, but there it was again, that noise, echoing around the shack.

  Somebody was hammering on the front door.

  I checked my watch. After midnight. What was going on? Jojo had woken as well—the neighbours had probably woken, and they were miles away. He was on his feet—or one of them, stumbling into a pair of shorts and hopping to the door.

  Water dreams

  ‘HANG ON,’ HE MUMBLED. ‘Hang on.’

  I raised my head, made out a female figure, heard a frantic voice riddled with gasps and sobs.

  ‘Em’ly Tempest there? Trouble in town, too much trouble…’

  ‘What the…’ exclaimed Jojo. ‘Meg?’

  I climbed out of bed, winced: oi, that hurt! My bones were being attacked by termites. I grabbed a sarong, hobbled to the door.

  Meg Brambles was standing on the threshold, almost pushing into the room; Magpie hovered in the background, hat in hand. The yellow Toyota was parked in the driveway, diesel motor pinging.

  ‘Oh Nangali…’ She almost cried with relief when she saw me.

  ‘What’s going on, Meg?’

  ‘Em’ly, you still in the police?’

  ‘Well, not…’

  ‘You gotta come, gotta come now. We need you!’ A slew of disjointed words poured forth. ‘Terrible business in town. I worry they killin that boy.’

  ‘Slow down, Meg. Who’s killing who?’

  ‘Bin a shocking fight, up town. One whitefeller finish. Kurlupartu lockem up that grandson bilonga we.’

  ‘Danny?’

  ‘Yuwayi.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Maybe for fighting, maybe drink—I don’t understand. His daddy got took to hospital.’

  Another drunken brawl at the house? Bandy badly injured? Possible, I knew: decent a feller as he was, Bandy inhabited a world in which violence was only ever a sniff or swig away.

  Jojo was climbing into the boots he left by the door.

  ‘Let me handle this, Em.’

  ‘No way.’ I pulled on a pair of cargo pants and a shirt, grabbed my bag.

  He turned me towards him, regarded me with pleading eyes.

  ‘Emily—haven’t you had enough?’

  I hesitated; but not for long. ‘Promised that boy I’d be there for him.’

  The back door opened: Hazel came in from her campsite under the tree, stopped short when she saw us standing there.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘The boy’s in trouble again.’

  ‘Danny?’

  ‘Fraid so. I’ll sort it out.’ She peered at me suspiciously. ‘Meg, where did all this happen?’

  ‘The basketball court.’

  ‘Come on—we can talk on the way.’

  I drove my own car, Meg beside me, shaking in her seat, moaning softly. Jojo and Magpie followed. We left Hazel on the veranda, a blanket on her shoulders, a frown on her brow.

  ‘You see any of this yourself?’ I asked Meg.

  ‘No, we bin sleepin down the South Camp.’

  ‘How’d you hear about it?’

  ‘Young Jimmy Crankshaft come down, tell us there been a big fight up town, said the kurlupartu lock up Danny, said his daddy bin hurt bad.’

  ‘When did you mob come in to Bluebush?’

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘What brought you in?’

  ‘Danny wanted to talk to you.’

  ‘You know what was upsetting him?’

  She sighed, stared out the window. ‘He bin unhappy ever since we come back from that trip to Dingo Spring.’

  ‘This morning he was raving about radio waves and god knows what. You don’t know what set him off, do you?’

  Her thin grey hair flickered in the wind; she pushed it out of her face, rested her chin on a hand. ‘When we bin travelling back to Stonehouse the other day, we stop along Green Swamp Roadhouse. Danny got talking to that China girl.’

  I groaned quietly. Jet. That’d be right—she’d drive anybody mad. People seem to think I can be a handful, but that runaway nun made me look like a muesli-munching pacifist.

  ‘Danny ask her about that stone statue thing…’

  ‘The sculpture?’

  ‘Yuwayi, that one the China girl bin build. Before we leave, Danny walk old Windmill through it, ask him to feel it with his hands.’

  I thought about Doc. Same tactile approach to his parti
cular discipline.

  ‘Did he make anything of it?’

  ‘Yuwayi. He tell us it’s a map.’ She tapped on the dash, made a map of sorts herself. ‘Like a painting, you know?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Maps and artworks have a close relationship round here; half the paintings in the galleries of Alice Springs are maps of one sort or another. Of minds, if not places. ‘Map of what?’

  ‘Dreamin out west.’

  ‘Fire dreaming?’ I wondered whether my own dream had been the premonition it felt like.

  ‘Water.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That water dreaming running down from Kirlipatu to Eagle Creek, you know?’

  ‘Not really.’ The country out west is interwoven with so many dreams it would take forever to unravel them. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’

  As I drove, I struggled to fit these latest pieces into the puzzle: Doc had constructed—and Jet copied, and Windmill identified—a three-dimensional map of a water songline that ran across the country out west.

  Which could mean anything or nothing at all. Might simply be the random intersection of two geriatric imaginations. But why had it rattled Danny so deeply? Something he knew that I didn’t, or just his drug-fired imagination?

  I’d have to follow up on this later; right now, I had more pressing things to attend to. We were on the edge of town and the basketball courts were looming.

  Scattered around the rickety grandstand was that ominous assemblage of paddy wagons and ambulances, of tech officers and spectators I’d come to recognise as a crime scene.

  Playing under lights

  THEY’D SET UP A floodlight. Its yellow arc lit a bleak body lying in a pool of blood. Bunter was standing guard as a tech guy scraped something into an evidence bag. Harley stood back, leaning against a fence and dragging on a smoke.

  I got out, glanced at the corpse: a whitefeller, burly and burnt. Face up. Not a face I knew. He had a marine haircut, black jeans, a glistening T-shirt.

  I spotted Cockburn standing with a couple of uniforms talking to—talking at—a group of young men. He had them up against the mesh fence, back-up ready in case they bolted. I came up beside him.

  ‘Sir?’

  He was busily scribbling onto a pad, but I felt him tense the moment I opened my mouth. ‘Kind of busy right now, Emily.’