Marble Bar

by Robert Schofield

  ‘So it wasn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ said Kavanagh, ‘it was me, but the bastards never had any proof.’

  ‘Why’d you do it?’

  ‘Because the police and the Securities Commission were going to drop the case against McCann. They weren’t able to come up with any evidence, had McCann’s lawyers badgering them and blocking them at every step, and they were under pressure from the receivers to drop it.’

  ‘I’d have thought the receivers would want to keep chasing him. Get their money back.’

  ‘Nah,’ she said, ‘exactly the opposite. Once they couldn’t get their hands on any easy money, they gave up the chase. The best way for the shareholders to get any of their money back is to let McCann re-float his company. I reckon they’d even let him use the defrauded cash to do it.’

  ‘And you don’t want that?’

  ‘The bastard is going to walk right back into the country as if nothing’s happened, and they are going to treat him as if he’s the saviour of his own company.’

  ‘Why you?’

  ‘Why not? Somebody has to take the bastard down. But mostly I just want to get that gold back. Do my job.’

  As they passed a clump of melaleuca, a startled flock of budgerigars burst out of the bushes and swarmed in front of the car. Ford stopped and watched them bob and dart across the ground, their green wings turning in the air, their screech and chatter slowly fading as they passed over the nearest rocky outcrop. He turned to Kavanagh. ‘Do you trust Saxon?’ he said.

  ‘You’re the one who left his daughter with him.’

  ‘You reckon he’d call it in? That he’d seen you here?’

  ‘Probably not. He knows he’s out of his depth. He’ll sit in that station babysitting your kid until his sergeant comes back to babysit him.’

  ‘You don’t seem to have a high opinion of him. Not much brotherhood evident in that big blue gang of yours.’

  ‘I don’t have much time for his sort.’

  ‘Uniform?’

  ‘Nah, the young ones,’ she said. ‘I’m sure he joined for all the right reasons, but the academy would have squeezed that out of him, taught him that it’s “them and us”. Then he comes to a place like this for his country service, and he’s apart from the rest of the town, just running down the clock till he can get back to the city. No wonder he doesn’t know what’s going on round here.’

  Ford let it drop and concentrated on the road, which had deteriorated to a series of ruts between boulders and potholes. He stopped the Toyota and engaged four-wheel drive. He started off again slowly, weaving across the road to find the smoothest ride. The road dipped down into a dry river bed, soft sand between stands of paperbark trees. Ford let the car snake across the dry sand. A small mob of cattle was huddled in the sparse shade provided by the trees. They were so thin their ribs were showing, their tails flicking at the cloud of flies that hung around them.

  After the river bed, the country opened out into broad grasslands. They could see the high ranges along the western horizon, and in front of them was a line of small round hills, dark at the top where black rocks poked through the yellow grass, marching away to the south. The road seemed to follow the black hills until it veered off east towards a fence line. A gate marked the place where the fence crossed the road, and a pair of horses stood on the far side, their heads hanging over the gate, watching them approach. One grey, the other chestnut, they were short and stocky brumbies, left to run wild on the property. Thin as the cattle, their coats were long and shaggy, their manes hanging long and covering their eyes. Kavanagh watched the horses as they approached, leaning forward in her seat. ‘Slow down,’ she said. ‘Don’t startle them.’

  She opened the car door before they got close to the gate, waved Ford to a stop, and then jumped down, leaving her hat and glasses on the seat. She walked calmly up to the gate, both hands held out in front of her, palms out. The grey pawed the ground as she got closer, threw back its head and tossed its mane, but didn’t move away. Kavanagh reached the gate and put a hand on each horse, close to the nose, stroking gently. They stayed that way for a minute, then the grey got spooked, kicked out its hind legs, turned and cantered away along the fence line. The chestnut watched it go, turned briefly to Kavanagh as if to say goodbye, then followed its partner at full gallop.

  Kavanagh didn’t move until they were out of sight among a stand of cajeput near the horizon, then turned her attention to the gate. It was secured only by a loop of bailing wire slung over the adjacent fence post, and Kavanagh had to lift and drag the gate, its hinges rusted and twisted. A small enamel sign, secured to the gate with wire and peppered with gunshot, announced that they were entering Corunna Downs Station. Kavanagh waved the car through and closed the gate behind it. When she climbed back into the car her face was pink and her shirt stained with sweat under her arms. She picked up her hat and swatted at a fly, then leaned forward to put her face to the air vent in the dash.

  ‘How far is the homestead?’ asked Ford.

  ‘Five kilometres, maybe,’ she said, lifting the hem of her shirt to wipe her face, showing Ford the tattoos across her back. He tried to read the expression in her eyes, something more than simple apprehension, but she put on her sunglasses and waited for him to drive on.

  Each was lost in their own thoughts for the remaining distance. The road curved around a fold in the landscape and Corunna Downs Station spread out in front of them. Ford stopped when he saw it, put the car in neutral and gazed out across the homestead. The dust kicked up by the car’s tyres drifted slowly past them towards the buildings.

  The homestead itself was a broad colonial building with walls of thick stone, rendered and lime-washed. Small windows were punched into the walls, some boarded up with plywood sheets dried and split by the sun. Other windows were shaded with tattered curtains. The high tin roof overhung the walls on all four sides to form a broad verandah. The roof sheeting was old, individual sheets lapped over one another, patched in places. What had once been a grand house, home to wealthy landowners, had become a symbol of the decline of the region’s dependence on farming. Mining had taken over, and the animals and pasture had been neglected. A narrow strip of garden surrounded the house, the only belt of green in a desiccated landscape, ringed by a timber picket fence that had rotted. Its missing posts gave the house a gap-toothed smile. A line of rose bushes pushed against the fence, grown straggly and choked with weeds, a few stray red petals hanging among the thorns. The garden was still irrigated, the water coming from an old wooden tank propped up on rusted steel legs. Moss bloomed on its sides, where water dripped from the gaps between the timber planks. An iron windmill stood beside the tank, creaking loudly as it turned in the breeze.

  The house was surrounded by a dozen other buildings: sheds and workshops, stables and garages. Several transportable dongas had been left on the edge of a broad circle of compacted dirt in front of the house, which acted as a storage yard. There was an old caravan too, and a collection of vehicles in various states of disrepair: trucks, utes and tractors, and a cattle trailer hitched to an old prime-mover. They were all caked in dust, and most were without wheels, sunk to their axles in the dirt. The only two vehicles that appeared roadworthy were a white ute, the aluminium tray stacked with galvanised tool boxes that shone in the sun, and a fuel tanker, painted a dull desert yellow, sitting high on off-road tyres. The cab was boxy, welded together from flat steel panels, and it looked military. Fresh tyre tracks in the sand led up to the ute.

  ‘Looks like somebody is home,’ said Ford.

  Kavanagh nodded slowly but didn’t speak.

  ‘That’s not the ute that Bronson was seen driving,’ said Ford, trying to coax her into speaking. She only shook her head. She was looking from side to side, taking in the open ground. The only trees were a handful of eucalypts near the house, taking advantage of the bore water. The rest of the country was parched sand and tall yellow grass, the occasional stunted bush. They could not approach th
e house unseen, even if they had not been spotted already.

  Kavanagh pulled up her backpack from the footwell and put it on the seat beside her. She opened it and pulled out a plastic supermarket bag. She laid it in her lap and reached inside, taking out two shotgun shells. She lifted the shotgun off the dashboard, broke it, and pulled out the shells. She tossed them over her shoulder onto the back seat. ‘Sporting shot,’ she said, as she fed the new shells into the gun. ‘These are double-ought.’ She snapped the gun shut and put it back on the dashboard, then pulled a handful of shells from the bag and held them out towards Ford. ‘Fill your pockets,’ she said. Ford stuffed the shells into the patch pocket on the leg of his work pants and she passed him another handful.

  Kavanagh opened the glove box and took out the pistol, checked there was a round in the chamber, then leaned forward to poke it into the waistband at the back of her jeans.

  ‘Who do you reckon is in there?’ said Ford.

  ‘I’m hoping it’s Roth,’ she said. ‘If we get lucky, your wife is with him. There’s only that ute, and that carries two, so we’re not likely to be outnumbered.’

  She turned and looked at him now, her eyes cold and blue. ‘I want you to drive up to the house nice and slow. Confident, like it’s a casual visit. Don’t hesitate. Park on the right of the house, in front of the ute. I’ll get down and go up to the door. I don’t want you to leave this vehicle. I want you ready to drive. Do you understand all that?’

  Ford nodded and put the LandCruiser in gear, driving slowly forward. Keeping his eyes on the windows of the house as they got closer, he drove in a wide arc around the yard, stopped in front of the house, then backed up towards where the ute was parked. As he pulled up the handbrake and killed the engine he saw the curtain twitch in the window next to the front door.

  Kavanagh stepped down from the Toyota, leaving her door open, and walked calmly along the fence in front of the house, heading for the open gate at the far end. As she passed the front door it opened and a man stepped out onto the verandah and leaned against one of the timber posts supporting the roof. ‘Mornin’,’ he said, his voice loud enough to carry to Ford.

  He was young, late twenties perhaps, tall and athletic. He wore a white polo shirt, which was a size too small and clung to his flat stomach and broad shoulders, with dark blue jeans and white tennis shoes. He had a blue baseball cap pulled down low to shield his eyes. Where the house was old and tired, everything about this man was young and clean-cut.

  Kavanagh turned to face him, tilting the cowboy hat back on her head and pushing her chest out, smiling broadly. ‘Good morning,’ she said, breezily. ‘I’m looking for my horses.’ He didn’t answer, just stood watching her, his eyes in shadow beneath the cap. Kavanagh raised her voice.‘Haven’t seen them since the day before yesterday. Wondered if they’d strayed on to your place.’

  They stood facing each other, ten metres apart, with the broken picket fence and the garden of weeds between them. The man didn’t speak. He looked Kavanagh up and down and then turned to the car. He shook his head, and Ford thought about the mining company logo on the door and the hazard lights on the roof.

  ‘Where you all from?’ he asked. Ford heard the accent now. North American.

  Kavanagh stood with her hand on her hip, took off her hat and used it to fan her face, then waved it vaguely in a northerly direction. ‘Two piebald ponies,’ she said. ‘They’d be looking better fed than any of the animals on your land. I saw some brumbies over by the fence line, wondered if my pair had taken to running with yours.’ She nodded in the direction of the gate and started walking towards it.

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said the man, and Ford picked the accent as Canadian. He’d worked with enough men from the big Canadian gold-mining companies to recognise it. The man pushed himself off the roof post and turned to follow Kavanagh, the two walking away from Ford, matching each other step for step either side of the fence.

  Ford could see the bulge of the pistol in the back of Kavanagh’s jeans and, looking at the Canadian, he saw a similar outline in his pants. His shirt was so tight Ford could make out the outline of the butt of the gun and the straight squared-off barrel of a big automatic. Ford swung open the car door and stepped down, then reached back inside to slide the shotgun off the dashboard. He put the stock in the crook of his elbow and rested the barrel on his shoulder, pointing to the sky, then said Kavanagh’s name.

  She turned first, looking at Ford and taking in the shotgun, waving him back with a flick of her hand. The Canadian turned more slowly and, when he raised his head to look at Ford, the sun hit his face and Ford could see his eyes under the cap, watching them widen as he took in the situation. He took two steps backwards under the verandah, looking from Ford to Kavanagh, his body tensing, his weight on the balls of his feet.

  Ford lowered the barrel of the shotgun and pulled the stock into his shoulder and, when Kavanagh reached behind her back for her pistol, the Canadian broke into a run, bending low and pulling the automatic from his pants. He raised the gun as he ran back towards the front door of the house, firing two rapid shots at Ford. Ford ducked behind the driver’s door, and the first shot punched through the sheet metal next to his head, the second shattering the window and showering Ford with glass.

  When Ford raised his head, he saw the Canadian disappear inside the house. Kavanagh was up and running, tossing her hat aside, her gun held out in front of her. She hurdled the fence and stumbled through the weeds, then sprinted along the verandah towards the door. As she passed the window the glass exploded outwards, the gunman firing from inside the house. Kavanagh flattened herself against the wall between the window and the door and looked for Ford. She saw him crouched behind the car door, his eyes peering over the sill, and she waved him forward.

  Ford ran around the back of the car to the passenger door, putting the big Toyota between him and the house. He reached across and turned on the engine, slipped the car into low gear, and released the handbrake. The car began to creep forward across the front of the house, Ford crouched next to the passenger door. When he was level with the window he stood tall and fired twice through the shattered window. He reached inside the car and took it out of gear, then fumbled in his pocket for two more shells. His fingers trembled as he fed them into the breech, and as he snapped the gun shut he heard the boom of the Canadian’s gun and felt the vibration through the car as the bullet slammed into it.

  He took a deep breath and peered over the hood at Kavanagh. She was still flat against the wall, her gun raised. With her free hand, she pointed to the window, her fingers making the shape of the gun. She mimed firing the gun at the window, then spread her palm and counted down from five on her fingers, then mimed a second shot through the window. Ford nodded that he understood, and she started another countdown on her fingers.

  Ford counted the last two seconds in his head then threw himself flat across the bonnet of the Toyota. He fired the first barrel through the window as Kavanagh crept through the front door. There was an immediate muzzle flash from inside the house and again he felt the car vibrate beneath his chest. He had lost count; he tried to start again, realised his error, so pulled the trigger, feeling the shotgun kick into his shoulder. He rolled off the car and landed on his side in the dirt, clawing at his pocket for more shells. He heard two quick cracks of gunfire from inside the house, then a single boom from the big automatic, then silence. He pushed the new shells into the shotgun, snapped it shut and then he was running, vaulting the fence and rushing to the door.

  ‘Rose!’ he yelled as he kicked open the door, the shotgun wedged low against his hip. He spun around in the front room, searching for her. She was standing near the window, staring down at the body of the Canadian slumped against the wall, two crimson rosettes blossoming across his shirt from the bullet holes in his chest. She looked around at Ford, her face ugly with anger. ‘I told you to stay in the car,’ she hissed.

  Ford put the butt of the shotgun on the fl
oor and leaned on it, bent double and fighting for breath. ‘Why didn’t you answer me?’ he said.

  ‘Don’t ever call me by my first name,’ she said.

  EIGHTEEN

  The Canadian’s eyes were still open. Ford sat on an upturned milk crate as he tried to discern the expression in them. He decided it was a mixture of surprise, fear and anger. A trail of blood trickled from the corner of the dead man’s mouth and, from the bright red stains on the front of his shirt, Ford figured that both bullets had hit a lung. His body was slumped against the wall, his legs twisted. The floor around the body was strewn with shards of broken glass, splinters of wood and chunks of plaster that Ford’s shotgun had scattered. The room was bare except for a trestle table stacked with the Canadian’s belongings and, next to it, in front of an old pot-belly stove, was an army cot with a sleeping bag neatly rolled at its foot.

  The pistol was still in the dead man’s right hand, a big chromed automatic with pearl inlay in the grip. His left hand held a telephone and Ford leaned over to prise it out of his fingers. It was larger than any phone Ford had seen for some years, with a rubberised case and an extended number pad.

  Kavanagh had walked back to the doorway, her hand on the frame, her fingers probing where the Canadian’s bullet had splintered the timber. She sighed and looked at Ford. ‘I felt the air move as it went past my ear,’ she said. ‘Could have only been a couple of inches.’ She was short of breath, her face wet with sweat, her eyes still darting nervously around the room. She waved her hand beside her ear, as if swatting away an insect, then walked to the trestle table.

  Ford stepped up behind her and laid a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged it off, so he showed her the phone. She took it, turning it over in her hand to examine it, and he noticed that her hand was shaking. ‘Satellite phone,’ she said.

  ‘Was he using it when you came in?’

  She pointed to the screen. ‘He sent a text just before I shot him. One word: vulture.’