Darkening Skies

by Parry, Bronwyn

  ‘It’s great to finally meet you, Jenn,’ she said. ‘Paul has very fond memories of you.’

  ‘It’s good to meet you, too. I’m sorry I didn’t call to see you yesterday. I should have, but things …’ Did she really have an excuse? She’d thought about visiting Chloe but had too easily found other ‘important’ things to do. But if she’d put family first, if she hadn’t gone racing off to the library, if she hadn’t pushed Larry and Wolfgang for the photos, might Wolfgang still be alive? One more thought for her conscience to fret over. ‘I got distracted,’ she finished lamely.

  ‘It’s okay, no need to apologise.’ Chloe waved at the chair beside hers and invited Jenn to sit. ‘I heard about Mick, and of course about the fire in Birraga. I phoned the hospital when I heard, but you’d just left. Are you okay? You weren’t hurt?’

  News of Wolfgang’s shooting mustn’t have travelled this far, yet, and she didn’t spread it. ‘I’m fine. But how are you doing?’ Better late than never in acknowledging the family’s sorrow. Marginally. ‘Jim’s such a huge loss to you all.’

  ‘Yes.’ The word had a small waver in it but Chloe held her composure. ‘The kids were very upset yesterday. A pretty torrid day, all round. Paul had to go and see Sean, of course, but it was hard without him here.’

  ‘Have you heard from Paul today? How’s Sean?’

  ‘They’re taking it hard. Both of them, but especially Sean. Paul’s going to stay in Wellington for a few more days. He’s allowed to spend a couple of hours each day with him. They’ll find out tomorrow if Sean will be given a day release to attend the funeral.’

  The funeral. Another ordeal to get through. Two ordeals: Jim’s and probably Wolfgang’s. ‘Do you know yet when it will be?’ she asked.

  ‘We’ll have to wait for the—’ Chloe dropped her voice as a boy left the other kids and came towards them. ‘The examination. That will be tomorrow, Steve said.’

  Depending on what the autopsy found, Jim’s body might not be released for days, or longer. The case was the same with Wolfgang. She might have to return to Sydney and then come back to Dungirri in a week or two, or maybe longer. Or extend her leave. Just the thought of more than a week here made her gut knot further, but she still had to find the truth behind the accident and Paula’s death.

  The young boy, not quite a teenager – the image of his father at the same age – leaned against Chloe, an arm around her shoulders, comfortable with the physical affection in a way Paul hadn’t been, back then. Jim had raised his boys the best he could, but physical affection hadn’t been part of his repertoire of skills.

  ‘This is Calum, our eldest,’ Chloe introduced him. ‘Calum, this is Aunty Jenn, your dad’s cousin.’

  Calum gave her a fleeting smile and said, ‘Hi, Aunty Jenn,’ before turning to his mother. ‘Mum, I think Ollie’s getting edgy again. He’s gone all … tight. Do you want me to take him to the car?’

  ‘No, it’s okay. I’ll come and talk to him.’ Chloe pushed back her chair. ‘Sorry, Jenn. Ollie’s on the Asperger’s scale. He finds crowds and noise hard to process. He usually copes okay with this, but today he’s without his dad or granddad. It’s a big change for a kid who needs routine.’

  ‘If you want us to take Dana and Calum for the afternoon, just let us know,’ Erin offered from across the table, and Jenn felt the odd one out, inexperienced with family and kids and this relaxed type of socialising.

  ‘Here, Jenn, try some of Deb’s sourdough,’ Andrew said, passing a platter piled with slices of bread. ‘She’s the cook. She and Liam are friends of Gil’s.’

  Friends of Gillespie? That explained why he seemed to be making himself at home. She took some sourdough, the butter melting into the fresh bread. The light-hearted, affectionate chatter of the Pappas family flowed around her, snippets of conversations drifted from other tables, kids with Spiderman and butterfly-painted faces raced around, and over at the barbecue Karl Sauer flipped steaks and sausages and flirted with a young woman. A pleasant Sunday afternoon in a country pub. The Dungirri Hotel had made it to the twenty-first century.

  But there was no sign of Mark, already more than half an hour late.

  She checked her messages and emails again. Nothing. Uneasiness crept up between her shoulders. Anything could have delayed him – he’d said he had a few jobs to do at Marrayin before he came in. But the uneasiness wouldn’t dissipate. She excused herself from the table, planning to phone him. She’d limped halfway across the courtyard when Kris Matthews came in through the side gate and scanned the crowd, looking for someone. Looking for her.

  Their eyes met and Kris walked briskly towards her, her skin pale, her face tight. Not good news.

  ‘I need you to come down to the police station,’ Kris said quietly, her words laced with urgency. ‘Now. With the photos Steve printed.’

  ‘Something’s happened? To Mark?’

  ‘Yes. My car’s just outside. I’ll tell you as we drive up there.’

  In the small bathroom in Kris’s residence behind the police station, Mark splashed cold water on his face. He couldn’t quite stop his hands from shaking. If not for Maggie’s curiosity, he’d be a dead man. He would have got into the LandCruiser to go and meet Jenn, turned the ignition key … and died.

  The certainty of it hit him harder than all the other dangers he’d survived over the past few days. Rescuing Jim, the attack in Birraga, the shooting this morning – he could have died in those, but whoever was behind them hadn’t necessarily been targeting him, intending to kill him.

  That someone could so cold-bloodedly wire explosives and a detonator into his car, to explode on ignition … it meant planning and acting for a single outcome: his death. Premeditated murder.

  Jim Barrett, Doctor Russell, Wolfgang Schmidt. His would have made the fourth death in three days. And they all led back, in one way or another, to the accident eighteen years ago – and to whatever had gone on before it. They had to find answers, and find them soon, to stop the killer.

  He’d brought the dogs with him, chaining Maggie and Dash on the front veranda and Rosie on the back and they barked a warning as Kris’s car returned. He gave his face one more splash with cold water. Focus. Work through the facts. Piece together everything they knew. The answers – or at least leads to them – had to be there, somewhere.

  Kris and Jenn came into the kitchen through the back door, and before he could speak, Jenn – reserved, undemonstrative Jenn – thrust the folder with the photos at Kris and crossed straight to him, into his arms, burying her face against his shirt, her body trembling, tension wound tightly along her spine.

  Even as he closed his arms around her, he shot a questioning glance over her shoulder at Kris, but she shook her head slightly and slipped past them to the passageway that led to the police station.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Jenn said into his shirt, as if she’d seen that exchange, ‘I’ll be angry in a minute. Really, really pissed-off angry with whoever did this. It’s just …’ She pushed away from him, scrubbing at her eyes to wipe the dampness away. ‘Holy crap, Mark, that was way too close. Kris said if it wasn’t for the dog, you’d be …’

  Her attempt at anger falling short, she stood a metre from him, hugging herself, and pressed a fist against her mouth, unable to say the word.

  Dead.

  Although he wanted nothing more than to hold her, to be held, to affirm life and love and humanity, he recognised his adrenaline reaction was an hour older than hers, and for him the racing, gut-slamming what-ifs had finally slowed. She still had to process the fright, the shock, and all on top of this morning’s trauma.

  ‘I’m alive, Jenn. They tried and failed. Thanks to Maggie’s good nose. She’ll get the best bones every week from now on.’

  His attempt to lighten things had no effect. She stared at him, eyes wide, struggling with her distress.

  ‘I can’t lose anyone else, Mark. I can’t. My parents, Paula, Jim … everyone I loved. I can’t lose you. So, you’ve just got t
o damn well stay alive and safe.’

  I can’t lose you. Still in shock, her natural guard lowered, her thoughts and emotions were probably as raw and tangled as his. But her confession hit him like an electric shock – part stun, part pain, partly a jolt of energy and life into emotions he’d suppressed for years.

  She was babbling like an upset kid, when he was the one who had narrowly escaped death and must be feeling the shock. Where was her control, her consideration?

  There were questions in the brown eyes that studied her for a long moment, but whatever he was feeling, he kept it to himself behind a gentle smile and a light response. ‘Believe me, I’m going to do my best to stay alive. Definitely my preference over the alternative.’

  How could she be angry, or fall to pieces, faced with his calm courage and humour?

  She relaxed a fraction, the worst of the initial shock wearing away. She had to get herself together and ready to deal with the challenge they faced.

  ‘So how do we keep you alive? Where to from here?’

  ‘Steve and Kris are in the interview room,’ he told her. ‘We’re going to work through everything we know so far.’

  ‘Steve’s still on the case?’

  ‘Yes and no. Ordered off duty today. Now called back on for temporary protection duties. For me.’

  She immediately saw the advantage. ‘So, we can work on the case with him.’

  ‘Yes. For this afternoon, at least.’

  Doing something, anything, practical to keep him safe might help her forget the moments of sheer terror when she’d thought him hurt – or worse. She made a credible attempt at a grin. ‘Let’s go and work, then.’

  The police station was tiny, a few rooms joined to the cottage and all built a century or so ago, when policing was a much simpler business.

  In the small interview room, Steve laid the photographs out in date order, covering the table. Kris wheeled in a whiteboard from her crowded office and positioned it against the wall, making best use of the limited space. Mark brought in a couple of the plastic chairs from the reception area and Jenn sank on to one of them, giving him a grateful smile.

  Mark pulled up the chair next to her. With the four of them around the table, the room was crowded and she was acutely aware of Mark only inches away. On the surface he appeared calm, composed, but she sensed the tension in him, humming like a tightly drawn string.

  Jenn hauled her brain into journalist mode. Much easier to deal with the firm ground of facts and process, questions and answers, than the quicksand of emotions and unknowns.

  First, establish the playing field. ‘Is Detective Haddad coming?’ she asked.

  Steve glanced up from sorting the photographs. ‘Not yet. Not for a while. She’ll be busy with forensics and the Feds for at least a couple of hours.’

  ‘Mark said you were ordered off duty. Why?’

  ‘Because I’ve already been on for eight days straight. Nasty domestic-violence case earlier in the week. I was supposed to be rostered off Friday and over the weekend.’

  ‘Did Haddad order it?’ She was beginning to feel like an interrogator, and Steve noticed, shooting her a glance that told her he’d only respond if he chose. But he answered her question.

  ‘Nope. Regional Inspector’s orders, not Haddad’s. She’s got lead on the murder investigations, though. I’ll be “local liaison”. So, since I’ve been called back in to babysit Mark, I plan on doing my job.’ He gave a wolfish grin. ‘First time I’ve been given official permission for my local liaisons.’

  Kris snorted. ‘In your dreams, Steve. You don’t have time for that kind of liaison.’

  Jenn watched the good-natured humour flow between them. Colleagues and friends. Given the tough investigations they’d dealt with in the past couple of years, the trust and respect for each other must have been earned, and Mark’s ease with them reflected the same regard. A good sign that she could trust them.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’d dream about it if I had time to sleep,’ Steve retorted. ‘So, let’s get cracking and get this bastard identified and locked up.’ The humour vanished and he stepped to the whiteboard, picking up the pen to draw a circle in the centre of the board, jotting the words ‘fatal accident’ inside it. ‘Okay, let’s assume that this is the connection – the accident in which Paula Barrett died. Now, up here – because we don’t know yet how it’s connected – we’ve got the series of photographs of sexual activity, over years.’

  ‘The Bohème Club,’ Jenn said. ‘Wolfgang called it that.’ She took out her notepad. ‘Here are the words he said – I think I’ve got them right. “Bohème club” and “sex”. “Taught Dan … develop … photos”.’

  ‘A sex club in Birraga?’ Kris mused. ‘Hard to believe.’

  ‘Yeah, well it was the seventies when those photos start,’ Steve pointed out. ‘Sexual revolution, free love, the pill and no AIDS.’

  Beside her, Mark added, ‘Plus the demographics were different then. Larger population, on average much younger. While a lot of young people went to the city for university, a much higher proportion of them came back to work in the district than is the case now.’

  ‘Okay, so ripe conditions for sexual experimentation, I guess.’ Steve scrawled ‘Bohème Club’ on the whiteboard. ‘And someone photographed it. What did Wolfgang say about developing the photos?’

  Jenn repeated the words, ‘Taught Dan … develop … photos.’

  ‘That’s got to be Dan Flanagan,’ Steve said, and no-one disagreed. He laid his finger on the image of a younger Dan. ‘But why would Wolfgang teach Dan to develop photos?’

  Jenn had already thought it through. ‘They’re not the kind of photos you could get commercially printed, then or now. Wolfgang was a skilled photographer and developed his own images, so he’d be the obvious person to ask, wouldn’t he? He had the equipment, the skills, the dark room already set up. Maybe he was part of the club. He said something about it going bad.’

  ‘The combination of Dan Flanagan, sex and bondage is definitely bad,’ Kris said dryly.

  Mark rested his elbows on the table, his fingers intertwined tightly. ‘We need to find out more about this club. Who was in it, where they met. I need to know how my parents were involved.’

  ‘Have you had any word from them yet?’ Steve asked.

  ‘Nothing yet. I’ll check again in a little while.’

  He spoke evenly enough, but again Jenn felt the underlying tension in him. The sooner they had some response from Caroline and Len, the better. In the meantime, they had to keep following the leads they had.

  She tapped on some of the words she’d written. ‘Wolfgang mentioned a convent. But it can’t be the Birraga convent – that’s in the centre of town next to Saint Joey’s, and the nuns were still there into the nineties at least.’

  Mark nodded in agreement. ‘Sister Brigid moved out last year, into the nursing home. She was the last nun in the convent. She might know if there was ever another convent, though.’

  ‘I’ll get someone to ask her,’ Steve said.

  Jenn reached for the image of Dan Flanagan and Gerard McCarty emerging from the doorway. With the lens zoomed on them, not a great deal of the building showed. ‘In the meantime, does anyone recognise this place? Have ideas where it might be?’

  ‘There’s really only the doorframe, isn’t there? Maybe colonial era, if you look at the brickwork over the door,’ Kris said. ‘But, do you know what strikes me about the image? The other photos – they’re taken nearer the subjects, in the same room. This one isn’t. It’s a surveillance photo.’

  It was obvious when compared with the other images. Jenn kicked herself for not noticing before.

  ‘I agree,’ Steve said. ‘So, who’s doing the surveillance? Wolfgang? And why?’

  Jenn looked at Wolfgang’s last words, searching for a pattern, significance, possibilities. ‘He mentioned blackmail. “Club, convent, went bad, blackmail, hurt Marta.” I assumed someone was blackmailing him, threatening Marta.
But I don’t know – maybe he was blackmailing them?’

  ‘Or gathering evidence against them,’ Mark suggested quietly.

  ‘Finding a way to take back the upper hand,’ Kris agreed. ‘Information becomes power. That was Gil’s strategy when he couldn’t do anything else.’

  ‘Is Gil around?’ Mark asked. ‘Does he know anything about this aspect of Flanagan’s activities?’

  ‘He’ll be back in a couple of hours,’ Kris said. ‘He’s taken Megan and Esther Russell to Esther’s sister in Dubbo. He’s worried about Megan’s safety.’

  Megan. Gillespie’s daughter. Jenn still had difficulty believing it – the rough, wrong-side-of-the-tracks youth now the unexpected father of a teenage girl. And the lover of a police sergeant. That, she found easier to believe; although friendly, Kris had a rock-solid core, tough without being harsh, and, Jenn had the impression, a strong but pragmatic sense of justice, of right and wrong.

  Steve stepped up to the whiteboard again, tossing over his shoulder, ‘You can bet I’ll be grilling Gil the minute he gets back. You can use your subtle feminine wiles on him after I’ve finished with him, Kris.’

  ‘Nothing subtle about my interrogation techniques,’ she retorted with a grin.

  Jokes, black humour, teasing, sarcasm – Jenn had seen them used again and again between teams of soldiers, doctors, aid workers … a protective mechanism, armour for dealing with unceasing death and darkness.

  His sense of responsibility never faltering despite the humour, Steve slid back into serious mode in an instant. ‘We’ve got a lot to cover, so we’ll need to divide tasks. Jenn and Mark, you two grew up here, and Mark’s got a good eye for faces, so I want you to go through each photograph and see if you can identify anyone else. Also, I need a full list of anyone who might have had some involvement with the accident or the aftermath. Kris, you and I need to start checks on the main players, including Wolfgang. I want to know more about him, and where he fits into this. We need to map connections, starting with working out who in the district would know how to wire up a car bomb.’