by Alex Palmer
Immediately, Harrigan went to the cabin door on the passenger side. Before he got there, it was pushed open by Laurie. The boy climbed out. Harrigan leaned the shotgun against the ute and lifted out the other two children. Little Man was bawling loudly enough to wake the dead. Jen tried to comfort him but he pushed her away. Ambrosine was next.
‘You’re heavy,’ Harrigan said.
‘I’ll be heavier if I’m dead.’
Harold had got out the other side and was leaning on the vehicle for support.
‘We’re lucky we didn’t go all the way over,’ he said, one hand on his forehead. ‘I cracked my head.’
‘Cracked your head?’ Ambrosine laughed loudly and went and grabbed him by the arm. ‘Fucking Christ, Harry. Can’t you drive?’
‘It was my hands. They were hurting too much.’
‘Keep it quiet! Get your kids in the house now.’ Harrigan spoke as quietly and urgently as he could. ‘Harry, take your shotgun. I’m going to get my car out of the garage. I’ll drive it to the back gate and pick you all up there.’
Harold took the shotgun and went towards the front door with the others. Harrigan walked quietly to the kitchen end of the house, past a thick-trunked old sugar gum whose branches extended above the veranda over the roof. Suddenly, he heard a scuffle behind him and turned to look back. Harold was gesturing to him. Before Harrigan could work out what he meant, he laid the shotgun on the edge of the veranda and sat down abruptly as if too shaky to stand. Ambrosine began to help him to his feet. Harrigan waved at them to get into the house as soon as possible.
The night air was warm. Harrigan stepped up on the veranda, staying close to the house and moving carefully in case the wooden boards creaked. Just before the corner, he stopped and took out his gun. From here, he could see Harold’s ancient rotary clothes hoist, the house fence and beyond that the garage and the yard. Everything was still. It was deeply silent. Too silent. At once, he realised what Harold had been trying to tell him. Rosie wasn’t barking. She should have been barking from the time the ute had arrived at the house. It should have been the first thing they heard. Silence is death. Someone had found a way of silencing her.
In the darkness, Harrigan almost stopped breathing. He turned off his phone in case it rang in the silence. How could you find me? Standing there, tense to every sound, he became aware of a small nugget of pain near the strap of his shoulder holster. He touched it, then reached into his shirt pocket to take out the thick gold badge he had been given at Life Patent Strategies that morning. When the ute had nearly overturned, he must have rolled onto it, pressing it into his chest. Until now, he had forgotten about it. What better way of smuggling a tracking device into his car than by pinning it to his shirt? He put the badge on the window sill beside him. Thought.
Assuming it was Grace’s gunman waiting for him somewhere out there, he would have found Harrigan’s car in the garage, which meant Harrigan was coming back. Unless he was blind and deaf, he would have seen and heard Harold’s ute coming across the fields and heard them all arrive, no trouble. He must have worked out that somehow the ute was no longer functioning.
The scenarios were these. He would either ambush Harrigan’s car on its way back to Coolemon or sabotage it beforehand so that it broke down in the middle of nowhere. In the isolation, he would pick off as many of the passengers as he could. If his purpose was getting hold of the tape, then he would try and take Harrigan alive, although not necessarily in one piece. If he was winged in the shoulder, the way the Ice Cream Man had been, he would be much easier to deal with. Or he might shoot everyone here in the backyard just as soon as they walked out of the house to the car. Leave the bodies to be found by whoever, whenever. Again, disable Harrigan so he could be dealt with more easily. An experienced gunman with the right weapon could do it.
Either way, this person would be waiting where he could see Harrigan approach the garage to get his car. In the pepper trees that lined the south-western side of the house. That vantage point would give the watcher a full view of the yard and enough of the back door to see anyone going in and out.
Leaving the LPS badge behind, Harrigan turned and silently made his way down to the other end of the house. From the front veranda, the ruined gardens were ghostly in the moonlight. He moved towards the pepper trees, the bulk of the house water tank providing him with cover while he crossed to the open space. There was too much leaf litter under the thick line of trees to walk silently. Very carefully, he moved through them to the bare ground on the other side, waiting for a shot or a blow to the head, even for Death to touch his shoulder and say ‘Time, please’. Nothing happened.
On the other side of the trees, he saw a white car parked where it was invisible to the house, under the grove of coral gums that had once been part of Mrs Morrissey’s gardens. It was too far away for him to get its registration number.
Slowly, Harrigan moved along the line of pepper trees, keeping close in to the shadows and stooping to get a view closer to the ground. Then he saw who he was looking for. On the other side of the water tank, a man was crouching in the trees where he had a clear view of the back of the house and the yard, his firearm at the ready. It had a scope, presumably with night vision. Harrigan raised his own gun. Whoever this man was, he wanted him alive.
Very carefully, he moved forward into the pepper trees, getting closer. Suddenly there was an earsplitting screeching, a furious scratching and scattering of the leaves. The man jumped up immediately, turning and firing in a single action. Harrigan dodged down and sideways, slipped on the litter and smacked his left shoulder against a tree, just escaping falling into the dirt. The bullet thudded instantaneously into the tree trunk on his right, barely missing his shoulder. It was a soft sound, a quiet gun. Harrigan fired back, a loud crack in the night. The bullet scored across the man’s lower left arm. He dropped his gun with a curse. Immediately Harrigan was there, kicking it across the dirt.
The man was on Harrigan before he could fire again, gripping his right wrist. The grip was painful, tight as a vice, relentlessly digging into a nerve. He was trying to numb Harrigan’s hand and make him drop his gun and at the same time crash him backwards against the nearest tree. With his other hand, he punched Harrigan hard in the stomach, smacking into the soft tissue over and over. Harrigan gasped, tried to yank his right hand away but couldn’t shake off the grip. He’d always had a strong left as a boxer. With his bare fist, he cracked his left hard on the man’s upper arm, then smacked him in the face and neck repeatedly. They grappled silently. His right hand was growing numb, the gun slipping from his grip.
Harrigan levered himself forward, overbalancing them both, pushing the man to the ground between the trees and the house, landing on him heavily and winding him. The force of the fall knocked the gun from Harrigan’s nerveless hand. The man tried to grab at it but it was on the wrong side for him and Harrigan managed to twist and skitter it out of reach with his foot. Still the man did not let go of his wrist. He had a powerful supple strength, it was like wrestling with an angry tomcat. Gripping his hand in Harrigan’s hair, he tried to force Harrigan over onto his left side. Harrigan knocked the man’s head hard onto the ground. The man punched his face and tried to gouge his eyes. Then Harrigan’s hand was released. It was numb. The man pushed away from Harrigan with all his strength, kicking at him and rolling back out of his grip, tearing his shirt. He staggered to his feet and ran for his gun. Harrigan rolled back and went for his own gun with his left hand. Then in the night there was the roar of a shotgun.
‘You fucking mongrel!’ Harold shouted.
The blast had propelled Harrigan’s assailant sideways. The man tried to scrabble for his firearm again, only to be driven back by another shotgun blast. He got to his feet and sprinted away, followed by a third blast. Harrigan got to his feet after him. His right hand was useless. He snatched up his gun with his left hand and ran in pursuit. The man was heading for his car. ‘Police! I’ve got backup coming,’ Harrigan shoute
d.
By the time he reached the far corner of the house, the man had gone into the coral gums at the end of the garden. Harrigan went after him. He heard a car starting and then roaring away. Running forward, he saw a white BMW disappearing down the track towards Harold’s main gate. It didn’t cross the bridge but turned right onto the Creek Road, driving away at high speed. Harrigan sheathed his gun in his holster and ran through the gardens into the house paddock. Harold joined him.
‘I couldn’t shoot straight, mate. My hands were hurting too much. I was worried I was going to get you.’
‘Don’t worry about it. You don’t know what you saved us all from. If I remember rightly, he can get out onto the highway that way, can’t he?’
‘He can, but he must have been here before. That road’s not on the maps. You’d have to know about it.’
Suddenly the car stopped. There was a gap in time. Then Ambrosine’s cottage blossomed in flames into the night. They heard the car drive on. It hadn’t turned on its headlights.
‘You fucking bastard,’ Harold said. ‘If that spreads to the creek, all that vegetation along there will go up.’
‘I’ll call the fire brigade.’
Harrigan’s right hand was beginning to tingle as the nerves came back to life. He ran towards the house to be met by Ambrosine running out of it.
‘My house. Every fucking thing we own. Everything fucking thing the kids had. All my tattooing gear, my books, my machine, my photographs. Jesus, fucking everything.’
The flames from the cottage flared higher, visible for miles. Her children had followed her out. They stood in a straggling line behind her. Harrigan saw a look of deep anger on the older boy’s face.
‘Mum, something’s coming,’ Jen said.
‘It’s the backup I asked for,’ Harrigan said.
Three cars were crossing the bridge in convoy. He saw one turn onto the Creek Lane and speed in the direction of Ambrosine’s cottage. They would take care of the fire one way or another, including calling out the rural fire service. The other cars continued to the farmhouse.
‘Whoop-de-bloody-do,’ Ambrosine said. ‘Too fucking late now. Come on, kids. Inside. Let’s get you out of the way. We’ll think about what we’re going to do next tomorrow. We’ve got nothing now. Just a rust-bucket car and that’s it.’
‘Mum, Harry said that man must have shot Rosie. Why did he do that?’ Jen asked.
‘Not now, sweetheart.’
‘But why?’
‘Baby, I don’t know. It’s too hard for me right now. Because he’s a cunt. Come on.’ She took Little Man by the hand and they disappeared inside the house.
‘Can you take my shotgun, mate?’ Harold said. ‘I’m going to have a look at Rosie.’
‘No worries.’
Harold turned and walked quickly to the end of the house. Harrigan followed. At Rosie’s enclosure, Harold unhooked the gate and squatted down in front of her kennel. She lay on her blanket, shot once through the head.
‘At least it was quick,’ he said.
After this, he did not speak. Then Ambrosine was there at the gate.
‘Do you want a cigarette, mate?’ she said to Harold. ‘I rolled you one in case you did.’
‘Yeah, thanks.’
She lit two cigarettes together, one for her and one for him, then turned and went back to the house.
‘I’ve got to get rid of the carcass. I can’t leave her here till tomorrow.’
‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Harrigan said.
‘No, I’ll do it myself. Your mates are here. You’d better go talk to them.’
Shotgun in hand, Harrigan went to meet the arriving police. Looking back, he saw Harold lodge the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and drag Rosie’s body from out of her kennel on her blanket. He carried her away behind the brokendown poultry sheds. Against the dark, the old struts and chicken wire were as fragile as torn cobwebs. Harrigan watched him disappear, wondering how much it had hurt him to pick her up, how heavy she was in his arms. He checked his watch. It was after midnight and the night had hardly begun. As usual, he had work to do.
17
I am a machine, Harrigan thought. He ticked off the details as if feeling and thought were dead. Mercilessly he rang Trevor, dragging him out of bed, giving him lists of directions for what he wanted to happen, people to be flown down to Yaralla first thing tomorrow, including Trevor’s own people and a forensic team.
‘Well, boss,’ Trevor said when Harrigan had stopped talking, ‘I’m glad to hear you’re still alive.’
‘That’s nice to know. Thanks, mate,’ Harrigan said, for once a little thrown.
The local police had retrieved the shooter’s gun. Bagged for examination, it was slender and deadly in its cheap plastic dress. It would go back to Coolemon with one of the police cars. The gold badge would not. Harrigan had collected it from the window sill, planning to oversee its fate himself.
Out in the night, Ambrosine’s cottage had subsided to a smouldering heap. The fire hadn’t spread to the trees along the creek. There was no wind and both the bare soil surrounding the cottage and the dusty lane had acted as a fire break. First thing in the morning, it would be cordoned off as a crime scene. The shooter was almost certainly well on his way to Sydney by now. Even so, Harrigan wasn’t going to send anyone out into the dark. He decided Ambrosine and her children would be as safe here for the night rather than making the trip to Coolemon. He told the uniformed officers to wait while he went to talk to her. Right now, he wanted information.
She was in the kitchen sitting at the table. Sheets of paper, a small array of pencils and a pencil sharpener were scattered around her. She was drawing; quick constant lines crossed the page. A bottle of whisky stood on the table with a partially drunk glass of it next to her cigarettes.
‘Fucking hell, mate,’ she said when he walked into the room. ‘I didn’t look at you properly before. You can tell you’ve been in fight. What does that other bloke look like?’
‘Worse, I hope.’
‘Do you want a drink? Harry won’t mind.’
He did need a drink. Now that he had time to think about them, his bruises were beginning to hurt. He poured himself a whisky and sat down. There was a sense of late-night exhaustion in the room.
‘Where’d you get the stationery?’ he asked.
‘Out of the drawer over there.’
‘Where are the kids?’
‘I got them into bed. They’re asleep. They already have nightmares, poor buggers. It’ll get worse now. Want a cigarette?’
‘No, I don’t smoke any more. You know that.’
‘Yeah, you gave them up, didn’t you? You used to smoke like a fucking chimney. How’d you do it?’
Brutally, during a long, scorchingly hot drive to Sydney in a car without air conditioning, the day he’d left Coolemon for good. He had woken in the morning sodden and seedy from the previous night’s celebrations, melancholy with post-alcohol blues, his throat sore from too many cigarettes. Somehow he’d got through the farewell ceremonies. The senior sergeant replacing him, the mayor and the local state school principal had all come to shake his hand. On his way out of town, he’d seen by the roadside a rusting 44-gallon drum with a sign painted on it in bright yellow letters: Plese put yr rubish in here. Thank u. On impulse he stopped, threw his cigarettes and lighter into it, and drove on. For the next six or so hours, air at 42°C had blasted in through his windows. By the time he reached Sydney, he felt he’d sweated every lingering trace of nicotine out of his body, along with the alcohol from the night before. His shirt was drenched yellow. He hadn’t had a cigarette since.
‘Never mind that,’ he said. ‘You can tell me the truth now. Did the Ice Cream Man find you out here?’
Ambrosine was lighting her own cigarette.
‘Fags will follow me to my grave. That was pretty fucking close tonight,’ she said. ‘Yeah, Mike came and saw me. He died out here too. How did he know I was here? Did you fucking tell
anyone?’
‘No, mate. It’s your arms.’
She looked down at them, bare to her shoulders. They were marked with tattoos and psoriatic lesions.
‘He paid someone in the health department for a list of all the chemists who were dispensing the ointment you use under the Pharmaceutical Benefits System. That list had to say Coolemon Chemist. He knew I’d spent time out here; he as good as sent me here. He just joined the dots.’
‘Jesus. I never thought of that. I hardly ever go into town, just when I have to do my shopping. He must have followed me and the kids home.’
‘When was this?’
‘End of September.’ Ambrosine put down her cigarette and started to sketch again. ‘We hadn’t been back from town that long. I’m unpacking things in the kitchen. Little Man was looking out the back door. He says, “Man, man.” It was Mike. He was getting out of his car.’ She stopped and took a drink. ‘When you live like we do, you expect it to happen. We had a plan. If Mike turns up, the kids go out the back window and they head for the creek bed. I try and get to the car. If I get away, I pick them up. If I don’t, they keep going till they get to a farmhouse somewhere.
‘They got out but I didn’t even make it to the front door. Mike got me. He was sitting on my back with his gun at my head. “Hi, Ambro. Long time, no see.” Arsehole. He wanted to play games. I’m lying there, crying. Then there’s a shot outside and another. Mike’s off me and he’s heading for the front door. It opens and someone I’ve never seen before walks in. Just like that, he cracks Mike one in the shoulder. It breaks the bone, I can hear it. Mike drops his gun, he’s down. This guy smacks him one on the head and he’s out for the count. I run for the back door but the man gets me from behind and pushes me against the wall. His gun’s on my head and he says, “Are those your kids, man? They ran down into the creek. You call them back or you’re dead meat.”’