Darkening Skies

by Parry, Bronwyn

  ‘Yeah. Maybe the doc didn’t look at what he was signing. Maybe he did. But Gillespie can be thankful that the custody records were complete, and contradicted the hospital’s. That’s what got his conviction quashed. There was no other evidence suggesting culpability.’

  ‘Yes.’ Mark had noticed the absence of other evidence in the transcript of Gil’s committal hearing. The blood-alcohol report and Gil’s guilty plea – made under duress – had ensured a speedy conviction. Which left far too many questions unanswered.

  Straightening and stretching his arms, Steve asked, ‘Speaking of police records, can you send me a copy of what you have?’

  ‘I’ll email the file to you this morning.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ve been hassling the archives staff, but their files are missing. They can’t find anything in the computer files – there was a basic system back then – or paper files. And the blood sample itself is apparently long gone.’

  The last thin hope Mark had held for a speedy resolution disappeared, and he swore silently. ‘No chance of DNA analysis, then.’

  The look Steve gave him had a dose of compassion in it. ‘No. No nice clear answers there. But add together Doc Russell’s death, missing police records, the fire at your place yesterday and Jim’s murder, all less than twenty-four hours after your announcement, and I’m smelling a hell of a lot more than just smoke.’

  ‘It has to be someone attempting to destroy any evidence relating to Paula’s death – the police report, what Russell knew. Believe me, Steve, if I’d known there was a substantial risk to anyone, I’d never have spoken to the media yesterday.’

  ‘I believe it. I wouldn’t have thought a crime this old would provoke this response. I’ll keep an open mind, but I want a list from you of all the people who might have some knowledge of the accident and its aftermath. Names, Mark – anyone, from police stationed here at the time, to paramedics, to nurses at the hospital.’

  Mark already had several names listed on the note app on his phone. ‘Bill Franklin was the sergeant based at Dungirri at the time.’

  Steve nodded. ‘I checked on Franklin yesterday. He went up to the Northern Territory after he retired. A couple of years ago, he drove off into the bush in Kakadu and disappeared. His car and campsite were found, but no signs or sightings of him since and his bank accounts are untouched. The Territory cops are referring it to the Coroner for an inquest.’

  The wild country in the Kakadu National Park could kill a man quickly, and in the vastness, remains might never be found. A crocodile, a snake, a wild boar, or even heat stroke or a heart attack – plenty of things could go wrong for an old man alone and a long way from help. Mark mentally struck through Franklin’s name on his list.

  The second contender was definitely still alive. Dan Flanagan. Everything Mark knew about the man pointed to the likelihood that he’d been the one behind the cover-up, yet in the same way the police had not been able to pin anything on the patriarch of the family despite arresting his sons, Mark had no evidence, no link, nothing solid to prove Dan’s involvement.

  ‘Bill Franklin wasn’t the brightest guy,’ Mark commented carefully. ‘Someone with more influence, more ability to fix things must have been involved.’ He didn’t mention Flanagan’s name. He didn’t need to.

  ‘There are several avenues of enquiry I’ll pursue, don’t worry. People with influence, as you put it. Although I have to say, Gil has plenty of suspicions about who was behind setting him up, given the enemies he’d made, but all the threats were delivered by hired thugs, so he doesn’t have any firm evidence. Which reminds me, Mark, I want to talk with your parents. They retired to the coast, didn’t they?’

  People with influence. No evidence against Flanagan. His parents. Steve’s connection of the three ideas caught him unawares, but the frankness in the detective’s study of him made clear his train of thought. As prominent and active landholders in the district, his parents had been influential. Rationally, the possibility that they’d arranged to frame Gil to protect their son had to be considered, but Mark’s every instinct insisted it was a waste of time. Service, integrity, decency – values not just drilled into him throughout his upbringing, but demonstrated in everything Len and Caroline Strelitz did.

  ‘They do a lot of overseas charity work,’ he told Steve. ‘At the moment they’re in Bolivia, building a school in an isolated village without phones or mobile reception.’ He thumbed through the contacts on his phone. ‘They have a satellite phone but it died, so I’ll send you their email address and mobile number. Good luck getting hold of them. I spoke with them last Sunday. They might go into a larger town this weekend to check their messages.’

  ‘Did you happen to ask them about the accident?’

  ‘Yes. They were shocked and worried. But it was a bad line; we couldn’t talk for long. I got the impression they’d never had any doubt that Gil was driving.’

  ‘But they’re not rushing home to stand by you?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Steve raised an eyebrow. ‘You don’t get along?’

  ‘Yes, we do.’ How to explain his parents to someone who’d never met them? Too complex to try, and not relevant to the situation. He shrugged and opted for a simpler, close-enough comment. ‘I’m thirty-six now, not eighteen, and even then they encouraged my independence.’ Not an entirely adequate phrase to describe their distracted affection and the consequent physical and emotional self-reliance that Mark had formed from a young age, but it would have to do. ‘They handed control of the family company to me some years ago and moved to the north coast. Their charity work is a full-time job, though, and they’re often away. They’re very dedicated to it.’

  ‘Dedicated’ – there was another inadequate word. Passionate. Driven. Although what drove them he’d never been entirely sure. All the commitment and energy they’d once put into building Marrayin they now poured into building schools, hospitals and clinics in isolated corners of the world.

  Steve’s phone, lying on the table, beeped with a message, and he heaved a frustrated sigh and thumbed a response. ‘I’ll have to go in a minute,’ he said, putting the phone down again. ‘But before I do, how do your folks get on with the Flanagans?’ He dropped the name almost casually, as if it were of no importance.

  Mark kept it brief. ‘Coolly polite. When they meet in public. But they try to avoid meeting at all.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I don’t know the full story. But I do know that back in the long drought in the early eighties, Dan Flanagan specialised in irrigation equipment, and he started buying up land and properties that were heavily in debt and had to be sold. My father didn’t say why, but he believed that some of Flanagan’s actions were, at the very least, unethical. He established Strelitz Pastoral and outbid Flanagan on at least three places, including the Gearys Flat property.’

  ‘Some rivalry there, then.’

  ‘Yes. Definitely not business associates. Of any kind.’

  After Steve left, Mark considered again the idea that his parents might have framed Gil to protect him – and he rejected it as swiftly as he had the first time. Not only because they weren’t here, now, and couldn’t possibly be responsible for Edward Russell’s murder, but more importantly because the idea of them framing Gillespie ran counter to everything Mark knew and believed about his parents’ characters.

  Dan Flanagan had to have known, if not masterminded the whole business. It had been there in his behaviour, especially since Mark’s election to parliament. The jocular pretence at friendship, the confident grins – oh, yes, he’d known. But the one thing Mark didn’t understand was why Flanagan had never used the information he held against him. And he wondered if he would try to use it now.

  SEVEN

  The blackened ruins of the homestead’s central wing stood against the brilliant blue of the sky, the reality of the destruction making Jenn’s breath catch in her throat.

  Never her home, but still she’d loved the house, the h
eritage grace of the old sections, the rambling additions of successive generations and owners, the whole place rich with history and stories. In Marrayin’s glory days, a hundred years ago, there’d been a whole community here – a family, household staff, station workers – with the buildings to house them. A self-reliant village, like so many large properties isolated from towns. As a girl she’d been fascinated by the history, spending many long hours reading the old account books and wandering around the outbuildings, imagining the kitchen maid in the dairy where the machinery shed now stood, the stableboy working with the family horses in the main stable, now the garage, and the grazier’s daughters playing tennis in long white frocks.

  But now there was only Mark.

  ‘I’m camping in the manager’s cottage for the time being,’ he said as he parked beside her car. ‘The east wing of the homestead might be livable, but I’m not sure yet how much damage there is.’

  ‘You won’t be employing another manager?’

  ‘No. Not for here, probably not at Gearys either. I prefer to be hands-on. I just couldn’t do it while I was an MP. Now I can again.’ And although he’d been silent and preoccupied most of the drive from Dungirri, that last sentence – Now I can again – rang with a quiet pleasure she hadn’t heard from him since she’d returned.

  Mark and Marrayin. Every memory of him mustering cattle on horseback or motorbike, hot, sweaty and filthy after a day fencing or calf-marking, or half-covered in hay and chaff after carting feed during dry spells, came with an awareness of his deep contentment, his joy and fulfilment in the hard work and its rewards. He’d been passionate and committed in his parliamentary career – she’d stood in the shadows in the public gallery when he’d given his influential maiden speech, and all her colleagues agreed he’d achieved significant respect for his actions and achievements – but nothing she’d seen or read in the past six years hinted at the same kind of serenity. Some people thrived on the cut and thrust of debate, on power plays and negotiations, on political tactics, manoeuvrings and victories. Not Mark.

  If his intellect, his detailed comprehension of complex rural issues, his natural leadership skills and his commitment to service had led him to stand for parliament, it must have come at a personal cost.

  Mark belonged here, at Marrayin.

  She stood in the drive-circle beside her car and surveyed the damage to the house. ‘You will rebuild it, won’t you?’

  ‘I hope to. I’ll have to wait for the building inspection and the insurance decision. And for the outcome of the police investigation.’ He shot her a sideways glance. ‘If I’m found culpable for Paula’s death, there may be a prison sentence.’

  Mark in prison? Her mind blanked and refused to process the thought. At what point had she shifted from anger and suspicion to wanting him to be innocent? Even at her angriest, her most doubtful of him, at no time in the past forty-eight hours had she imagined him behind bars.

  He stood by the back of the ute, gently rubbing the ears of one of the dogs, and when she didn’t respond he said, ‘I’ll accept the findings and the outcome, Jenn. Paula was important to me, too.’

  She found enough coherence in her brain to string some words together. ‘I know she was. So, now we just have to work out what actually happened.’

  ‘Yes. Although Steve’s first priority will be Jim and Doc Russell. We can’t know for certain if they’re linked, but I’m hoping those investigations will shed light on the old crime.’

  So was she. Because no matter what the level of public interest was, no police command was going to allocate many of their scarce resources to an old car accident that might, or might not, have been caused by a man with an otherwise unblemished record.

  A white car turned into the driveway. Insurance, WorkCover or police – whichever, Mark would be caught up with them for some time. Jenn checked her watch. She just had enough time to get into Birraga library before it closed; she wanted copies of the accident reports from their archives of the Gazette. She planned to investigate the accident, too, and that was a good place to start. She’d known all of the Gazette’s small staff. She’d find out from the archives what had been reported, and – just as importantly – what hadn’t, and armed with that information she would ask them why.

  ‘We don’t hold the hard copies here anymore,’ the young woman at the library’s information desk told her. ‘They’re in the Regional Archives Centre in Armidale. But we do have the papers on microfilm. Which year do you want?’

  Tucked into a corner in the reference section near several large printers, the small booth with the microfilm reader trapped warm air and received little of the flow of cool from the air-conditioning.

  ‘Can’t wait for digitisation,’ Jenn murmured, threading the microfilm through the rollers and under the lens. The rollers squeaked as she fast-forwarded through the months of papers, the images and text flashing across the screen in a scratchy blur.

  She slowed as she scrolled through the three editions in the second week in December and paused with a wistful smile at her Friday column, ‘Youth Matters’, celebrating its second anniversary. Started during her first week of work experience when she was fifteen, she’d badgered the editor Clem Lockrey to keep it going, providing copy every week, and before long it became a regular column. All those afternoons through years ten and eleven at Birraga High, hanging out at the Gazette office, making herself useful, drafting advertising copy, assisting with research and proofreading items eventually paid off when Clem gave her a desk, a modest wage as a part-time office assistant and the occasional by-line when she transformed Birraga Council’s media releases into coherent articles. And ‘Youth Matters’ had gradually moved from page eight to page four.

  She skimmed her very last column, ‘Cool things on the World Wide Web’, with some amusement at what had seemed cutting edge then, and pressed the button to scan it to email. Maybe she’d do a retrospective piece on it some day.

  She scrolled through Friday’s classifieds and sports pages to reach Monday’s edition. Front-page news, as she expected.

  The headline took up a third of the page: ‘FATAL SMASH KILLS GIRL’. The rational, distanced part of her brain focused on the clunky phrase. One of Larry’s, probably. Headlines weren’t his strength.

  But the headline didn’t matter. She couldn’t stay distanced and she braced herself as she scrolled the page up on the screen to study the photos and the story. Staring out at her was a four-column image of the smashed car at the crash site, with an inset photo of Mark in school uniform.

  Birraga High School captain Mark Strelitz was airlifted in a critical condition to the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle following a single-vehicle accident on Saturday evening on the Dungirri road that claimed the life of Paula Katherine Barrett, aged 18.

  Lead with the most important fact – and in the way of small-town newspapers and the social strata of the district, Mark’s injuries made more significant news than Paula’s death. Jenn ignored the twinge of resentment on Paula’s behalf. Selling newspapers was always the purpose, not assuaging the feelings of a few family members.

  The only child of graziers Len and Caroline Strelitz, Mark suffered head injuries and remains in a coma. Speaking from Newcastle, Mr Strelitz expressed his gratitude to police, paramedics and nursing staff for their care of his son, and his sorrow for Miss Barrett’s death.

  Build sympathy for the victim – and already, in this first report, Mark had been presented as victim, not offender.

  Morgan Gillespie, also 18, of Dungirri, has been charged with culpable driving occasioning death and was remanded in custody. Police allege Gillespie had a blood-alcohol reading of 0.14.

  A statement from the senior sergeant at Birraga added the detail that the car had ‘apparently swerved off the road and collided with a tree’. Coming after the mention of the blood-alcohol reading, it reinforced the perception of Gillespie’s guilt.

  The next statement, from the principal of Birraga High School, expre
ssed shock at the tragedy. ‘Paula was a delight to teach and a valued member of our school community, loved by her peers and always supportive of younger students.’

  Jenn’s eyes watered and she had to dig in her bag for a tissue. Good old Mr Howie.

  The final paragraph was in italics, indicating an editorial comment on the story, and as Jenn read she had to press the tissue against her mouth to suppress a sob, tears now spilling over.

  The deceased woman is the sister of the Gazette’s Youth Matters columnist, Jennifer Barrett. The staff of the Gazette express their deepest condolences to Miss Barrett and her family.

  The screen became a blur, and she had to look away, wipe the tears running down her face. It had to be Clem who’d added that. The main article had Larry’s old-school style, and his technically incorrect reference to an eighteen-year-old woman as a ‘girl’. But that reference to Paula as her sister – that was Clem, bless him, and it harked back to an editorial she had proofread for him about extended families and foster-siblings and complex care relationships. And he’d argued in that article that often the legal relationship didn’t matter as much as the relationship of the heart.

  God, she had to pull herself together before she started to howl. The grief shouldn’t still be this fresh and raw – it had to be just her fatigue and the shock of the past days’ events throwing her emotions off kilter.

  She heard a librarian informing other patrons that closing time was in ten minutes. Ten minutes. Hiding in her corner and howling wasn’t an option. She dragged a dry tissue over her eyes and made them focus on the machine. Print. Scan. Email.

  She quickly scrolled through the next couple of editions but saw little that related to the accident, other than a brief mention of Mark remaining in hospital in Newcastle. And then she was out of time. Wishing that small community libraries had the staff and funds for longer opening hours was wasted effort. She’d just have to wait until Monday to look for mentions of Gillespie’s committal hearing.