by Joy Dettman
Tony Bell’s more substantial cabin had been built fifty feet from Monk’s front gate. Bell owned two dogs: well-fed, well-groomed Alsatians. Well trained too. They could sniff out a copper at fifty paces. Around nine they’d started barking.
Raelene hadn’t heard them. Dino slept with one eye open. He heard them.
There’d always been an alternative route out of Monk’s property – just a track between tall timber leading to the railway line, at the place once known as Three Pines siding, near the site of Monk’s first timber mill. Little left of that mill now, just a partial shed grown in by trees, a dent in the earth where the saw pit had once been.
Collins knew that shed well. He’d driven there, backed the car into it, turned off the motor and left Raelene while he’d walked back to sweep away their tyre tracks with a small leafy branch, and to toss a handful or two of forest mulch around. He’d done it before.
There was a dirt track running beside the lines, used by the railway gangers who, from time to time, made repairs to the train line. At intervals, the track led back to the main road and to a good-sized inland town fifty miles west. He’d go west if he had to, but that morning he hadn’t believed he’d have to.
‘They’ll find nothing,’ he’d said to Raelene. ‘They’ll have their usual sniff around and leave.’
That’s what they always did. With nothing better to do until then, Raelene had curled up on the front seat, he’d made himself comfortable in the rear, and they’d caught up on a bit more sleep.
It was well after midday when Raelene crept to the outskirts of the commune. She came back faster. ‘There’s three cop cars there now.’
‘It’s your doing, you useless bitch,’ he said. They shared a bottle of beer – no longer cold, but thirst quenching; they rolled smokes and sat on in the shade, drinking, smoking, hunting flies and waiting for nightfall.
By nightfall, the property was crawling with cops. Collins had been dodging the bastards for years; he knew their habits. He knew their jails, too, and he wasn’t going back.
‘We’re rats in a bloody trap sitting here,’ he said, shoving Raelene across the seat and sliding in behind the wheel.
The fuel gauge had been brushing empty when they’d driven into Woody Creek. It hadn’t been a problem then. Plenty of fuel to be had at the commune, drums of it.
She blamed him now for not filling the tank. He blamed her for getting him into this shit. She hit him. He hit her. Then they rolled another smoke, opened another bottle of warm beer, and sat staring towards the commune, towards those forty-four-gallon drums of fuel.
Rats have survived for thousands of years by hiding by day and foraging at night; by fighting tooth and claw when cornered. Night was approaching. They had that on their side, and familiarity with this land. He’d been riding his bike around Woody Creek since the fifties. He knew most of what there was to know about the town, and what he didn’t know, she did. A well-matched pair, Raelene King and Dino Collins.
Full dark when they heard the roar of a goods train in the distance. Watched it come out of the night like a one-eyed monster, roaring down on them. It passed within a stone’s throw of the shed, shaking it, rattling the few sheets of iron remaining on the roof, vibrating the few palings and the earth beneath their feet. Then he started the motor.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ she said. ‘There’ll be cops on that fucking bridge.’
‘Get out or don’t,’ he said.
They bush-bashed through scrub, between trees, to Three Pines siding. He’d ridden those train lines before, on the bike, done it as a dare then, bumping along the wooden sleepers and over a narrow railway bridge, playing chicken that day with a passenger train. Not so easy to straddle the lines with four wheels, but he did it; then, with no lights showing, he tracked the goods train back towards Woody Creek, close enough for its racket to disguise the noise of his motor and Raelene’s laughter, though not too close.
The train rocked the narrow wooden bridge spanning the creek, but the ancient structure didn’t crumble that day, and train and car made it to the other side, the train howling its triumph as it continued on towards Woody Creek.
Not Collins. He got off the railway lines, drove through a paddock, heading south, scattering sheep unaccustomed to sharing their land with vehicles. Had to use the lights intermittently, his eyes searching for a back route out of the paddock. And found what he was looking for – a split-rail fence. They went through it, timber flying.
He found a dirt track he knew. It led to Cemetery Road, out behind the sewage farm, the Duffys’ place not too far away.
‘I’ll walk down to the Duffys. They’ll have petrol,’ she said.
‘The cops will be watching their joint. The red dyke keeps her tank full.’
He’d labelled Georgie ‘dyke’ a lot of years ago. He’d taken pleasure in draining her petrol tank while she’d slept – and others’. Carried a length of hose in his boot for such pastimes.
He turned south onto Cemetery Road, followed it for half a mile, then swung left onto a dirt track. The fuel gauge now showed empty, but the motor was still sucking juice from somewhere. It kept sucking to Stock Route Road, where it hiccupped and died, but the downward slope offered sufficient momentum for him to nose the car into the scrub out front of Flanagan’s.
They pushed it in deeper. First part, easy.
Screened by trees from the road and from Joe’s house, they rolled up their sleeves to self-medicate. They deserved it.
He opened the boot. She opened another bottle and they drank it while emptying the boot of the miscellaneous, searching for that length of hose and a jerry can.
A dog’s hearing is acute. Joe’s dogs started barking. Collins, never fond of dogs, armed himself with a heavy adjustable spanner, then, Raelene leading the way, they followed Joe’s fence down to his wood paddock, and cut through to Gertrude’s orchard fence. Didn’t climb the wire, not there. They followed it west until well past the house.
And they’d hit the jackpot. There were three cars parked in the yard.
‘That’s the old bitch’s Ford,’ Raelene hissed. ‘Gimpy used to tape a spare key behind his bumper bar.’
‘Get it,’ Collins said.
Easy for shadows to creep across that yard; plenty of cover to the chook pen. Not so easy to cross the open yard between the pen and the cars. A bare slice of moon had risen over Gertrude’s land. Light from the kitchen window lit the cars. Raelene, casting a smaller shadow, ran in a crouch towards them. Collins remained beside the chook pen.
Getting the key was simple. It was taped where it had always been taped. Getting the Ford out wouldn’t be. A modern station wagon was parked behind it, boxing it in against the fence.
She ran back to him.
‘There’s a foot between her car and the fence, and a bare foot behind it,’ Raelene reported. ‘We’ll need to move the wagon and the fucking thing is locked.’
He hadn’t come prepared to break into a modern car, but he wanted that Ford. The cops wouldn’t be looking for a couple driving a twenty-year-old Ford.
‘Smash the corner window,’ she hissed. He had the means to do that in his hand.
‘They’ll hear it, you brainless bitch.’
‘They’ve got no phone. What are they going to do?’
She stripped off her T-shirt, offered it to wrap the spanner to muffle the noise.
They’d come here to get petrol. He was willing to settle for petrol.
She wasn’t.
‘I’ll do it, you useless bastard,’ she hissed and snatched his spanner.
AS THE CROW FLIES
Cara’s coffee mug was empty. Fewer biscuits on that plate. Cards still on the table, and a bowl of eggs. Five women standing or seated around the table. They heard the dull ‘thunk’ of padded metal on glass.
Georgie, unable to identify the sound, raised a finger for silence. Jenny’s mouth closed mid-sentence as she turned to the window.
She recognised
the tone of her motor firing, and, with no thought in her mind but for her car, she ran, Georgie behind her, flicking on light switches, Cara behind them.
*
Too much light now for Dino. He’d released the wagon’s handbrake and gained an extra foot of space between it and the Ford, when that out-of-control bitch decided there was a faster way to move it. She reversed the Ford, and two bumper bars clashed.
Wheels spinning, the Ford’s motor roared in pain. The wagon moved, but not enough. Had Collins known the women were alone in the house, that one of them was the moll he’d sworn to get, he may have hung around. He didn’t know, and didn’t hang around to find out.
Rusting chicken-wire fence before her, which wouldn’t hold back much more than a flightless chook, Raelene slapped the gearstick into first and rammed the car at the fence. A post gave way with a snap; chicken wire raked the Ford’s previously unmarked paintwork as she backed up, and rammed the wagon again. It moved. Gears grating as she sought one to go forward when the passenger door burst open and a body dived in on top of her. Hands grabbed at her hair, at the steering wheel. Wrongly guided, Raelene’s foot flat to the floorboard, the Ford slammed through the fence and into Gertrude’s rusting old water tank.
It still held water, and the water flowed as Cara and Raelene fought in the confined area. Only for an instant. Georgie, now in the rear seat, immobilised Raelene with an arm across her throat.
‘Dino, you bastard!’ Raelene screamed.
He was long gone.
Panting, choking, defenceless but wily, Raelene stopped struggling. They thought they had her.
‘Where’s Tracy?’ Cara screamed.
‘Get over to Joe Flanagan’s, Jen, and call the cops,’ Georgie yelled.
‘He went that way,’ Jenny yelled. ‘I saw him running down past the chook pen.’
They thought they had her. She was jammed in against the driver’s door, the tank’s leakage washing the door, Georgie’s arm across her throat. Raelene could fight or breathe. She chose to breathe.
Rats fight when cornered. The adjustable spanner had been in her hand when she’d slid into the car. She’d placed it on the seat beneath her right thigh. Ten or twelve inches long, forged of solid metal, her left hand found the handle. Cara had immobilised her right.
Given the use of her right hand and space to swing, Raelene could have done a lot of damage with that spanner. She had little space, but swung it blindly, and felt it connect. She swung it again, again.
A rat will get through a crack in a wall a mouse might think twice about. Naked from the waist up, Raelene kicked the door open. Barely enough space to get her head through. Like a sweating cork released from a bottle, the rest of her popped free.
Dust and chook dung, given water, turn quickly to mud. Her sandal slid in the ooze. Hands necessary to save herself, she dropped her weapon – and ran.
Georgie, out of the car, took off after her. Her stride longer, she cut off Raelene’s escape towards Flanagan’s. Flight her only defence now, Raelene wheeled around and ran towards the road, towards the creek, towards the bush.
*
Had she been seeing well, Georgie may have continued the chase and caught her. Her hand discovered why she wasn’t seeing well. Blood was pouring from a gash in her eyebrow, sticky, wet, blinding. She yelled to Elsie to bring her ute keys out.
With every light in the house now burning, plenty seeped into the yard, enough for Jenny to see blood.
‘It’s bad, love. Come inside.’
‘Get the wood axe,’ Georgie ordered as Elsie came with the keys. ‘Get the shovel, Else, and use it on them if they come back. Close the windows, doors.’
Cara stood nursing her elbow and looking at Robert’s almost brand new wagon, at the open door, the broken corner window.
‘Go inside with them,’ Georgie commanded. Jenny, armed with the axe, reached into the car for Cara’s handbag.
‘You get inside. That cut needs seeing to,’ Jenny said, but Georgie was in her ute and Cara was attempting to open the passenger door.
Georgie unlocked it. The shop’s hand towels were on the passenger seat, waiting to be laundered. She used one of them to clear her sight as Cara slid in beside her.
You can’t back a car around and change gear with one hand. The towel on her lap, she backed up, swung the ute in a tight circle, then drove fast towards town and the police station. Left the motor running and ran to the door, the hand towel again doing what it could to stem the flow of blood.
No local man there, but a young one in uniform.
‘Raelene King was down at my place minutes ago,’ she told him. ‘I’m out on Forest Road, halfway to the caravan park.’
Half of Melbourne knew where to find the caravan park. He wanted details.
She wanted action.
He followed her back to the ute, but she was in it and it was moving. Drove on down to the bridge, where two cops with flashing torches stopped her progress.
‘Raelene King and Collins. They’re down at my place. I’m a mile out along Forest Road.’
They sent the message through on their walkie-talkies, and four miles on, two cop cars, sirens howling, passed the red ute.
A dark road, dark land, but no chance of missing Monk’s property. It was lit up tonight as it may have been lit a hundred years ago when Maximilian Monk had thrown one of his grand garden parties. For once, his monogrammed gates were flung wide and welcoming. Three Pines they used to call that place, before it became the commune, the druggies’ camp. Tall, imposing gates, designed to immortalise the property’s name, old man Monk’s initials set in iron circles atop each gate. Strong gates, built back when man had taken pride in his labour, so certain that his world would last forever.
Monk’s mansion was long gone, gutted by fire in the early sixties, only the partial chimney still standing. Cops partied around that chimney tonight, blue lights, amber, floodlights, moving torches and multiple men in uniform.
A flashing torch halted the ute’s progress at the gate, but the cop knew why they were there. He reached into the car to remove the bloody wad of towel hiding half of Georgie’s face. Fresh blood poured and he returned the wad; shone his torch in Cara’s face.
‘She’s the missing child’s mother,’ Georgie said.
‘Have you found her?’ Cara asked.
‘Drive on down,’ the cop said.
‘Have you found Tracy?’
‘A chap down there will speak to you.’
Ute moving again, until another cop stopped them with a flashing torch.
‘Have you found any sign of the little girl?’ Georgie asked.
‘Park off the side of the drive,’ he said, as two more police cars drove out.
Georgie parked where his torch beam directed, the ute’s front wheels on a hillock of weed-covered rubble. They got out as another male approached.
‘Have you found the little girl?’ Georgie asked again. ‘Cara is her mother.’
‘Is she dead?’ Cara said.
‘There’s no news yet on the missing child,’ he said. ‘Was Collins sighted at the property?’
‘She called his name,’ Georgie said. ‘My mother saw him running towards Stock Route Road. I didn’t see him.’
Jim Hooper had recognised the red ute or the red hair. He came limping out of the dark, John McPherson at his side. Georgie introduced Cara to Morrie’s father, to Robin’s grandfather, and the scene, played out against the backdrop of lights and movement, was surreal. At another time, in another life, an unused portion of Cara’s mind would have been standing off to the side, taking mental notes. Tonight, she needed every brain cell to retain her balance.
As did Georgie. Her hand-towel pad was doing little to stop the ooze of blood.
A cop led them across rough ground to an ambulance, where a medic pinched the edges of Georgie’s wound together, taped it, then covered the tape with an elastoplast patch. Her hands finally free, blood-stained, Georgie reached for her smokes and l
it one.
*
The activity was centred to the west of a chimney.
‘Jim’s father used to own this place. The house was a mansion,’ Georgie explained. ‘When he was engaged to Jenny’s sister, the house was still standing. Jenny reckons he damn near lived out here, slept in the root cellar evading his father and Lorna – and Sissy.’
Tonight, like a homing pigeon, he’d guided the police to where the old trapdoor had once been. It was long gone, but they’d found the opening, beneath grass and rubble and heavy timber planks; found it not ten inches from the spot he’d pointed to.
Tony Bell and his associates had found a new use for that massive underground cavern. When enough rubble had been cleared away, when two sheets of corrugated iron had been tossed aside, they’d seen light seeping up from between heavy planks.
Jim could have gone home, well pleased with his night’s work, but he’d stayed on to watch those planks removed, to watch four uniformed men lower down ropes to an underground field of marijuana, growing in pots beneath fluorescent lights.
The constables hadn’t emerged up those ropes, but six or eight hundred yards away in a cabin in the wood paddock. They’d gone up a dozen metal steps to a sliding door behind a wardrobe, and into a bedroom. They’d brought an extra out with them – a bail-jumping truckie, arrested for drug running in South Australia six months ago.
Sometime during the past ten or so years, comfortable living quarters had been dug into the rear of Monk’s cellar; and an hour ago, a stash of bank notes big enough to choke an elephant had been found there. They’d found heroin down there too, enough to keep every man, woman and child in Woody Creek pain-free for life. No sign of the missing child they’d come out here to find.
Tony Bell and his wife were on their way to Melbourne with the bail jumper, as were the two female occupants of the cabin. Their five kids had been taken into care. Kids everywhere. Kids standing with parents; older kids throwing clods at a loaded police van. John’s car copping its share of clods as he and Jim followed the van.