‘He’s gone?’
Jackie turned at the sound of his friend’s voice, then dropped his eyes. ‘Yeah.’
The old man put his hand on Jackie’s shoulder. ‘Is it happening again?’
‘Nah. It will just be Kevin. That will be their warning. They won’t take anymore.’
‘Until next time.’
Jackie’s head snapped up. ‘There won’t be a next time.’
‘The boys will want to talk to that police bloke.’
‘I said it before and I’ll say it again. No cops. This time they’ll listen to me. Kevin is being made the example.’
The sun was beginning to peep over the horizon when two of the younger men, Harry and Charlie, came out of their houses, stretching. Seeing the Elders next to the fire, they came over.
‘What’s going on?’
The two men looked up, their eyes red. ‘Kevin has gone.’
‘What do you mean, gone?’
‘Out bush, you mean?’
‘Nah.’ One of the Elder’s shook their head.
‘He won’t be coming back,’ Jackie said.
‘Who’s taken him? What are you talking about? Someone has taken him? The same as been taking the cattle?’ Charlie sank down into the sand and stared hard at the men. ‘If he’s gone, we gotta call the cops. Someone’s taken Kev!’ His voice rose as he looked around, as if he were hoping to see his friend appear out of the bush.
The Elder leaned forwards. ‘No cops,’ he said. ‘No cops. There’s been enough damage done.’
Jackie looked out over the creek and nodded, before looking at Harry and Charlie. ‘No police,’ he reiterated. ‘I seen this before. He’s not comin’ back. Kev’s not coming back.’
Chapter 33
‘What the hell is going on here?’ Dave asked as they pulled up at Spinifex Downs. The whole community seemed to be gathered around the fire, some sitting, some standing, but all looked bewildered and frightened. The silence as they stood there gazing at the police vehicle was unnerving.
Jackie came and stood looking at them without speaking. A sad stare. A stare that could see through most things. Then he turned and walked away.
‘Shit,’ Bob said, throwing open his door. ‘Something’s happened to Kevin.’
They followed Jackie down to a smouldering campfire, pushing their way through the quiet crowd.
‘What’s happened, Jackie?’ Bob said, squatting down in the dirt. ‘Where’s Kevin?’
‘I told him no police. He wouldn’t listen.’ Jackie turned his head away from them.
‘Tell us what happened. Do you know what time? When it was?’
‘It’s the same as before, white man takes what he wants. I got nothing to say,’ Jackie said stubbornly.
‘We’re here to help,’ Dave said. ‘We don’t want any harm to come to Kevin either. Can you tell us what you know?’
Charlie came and sat down next to them. ‘I’ve been up to the house. There’re blood and drag marks coming out the front door and down the steps. I tracked ’em to the bush but they disappeared after that,’ he said.
‘You keep your mouth shut, boy.’ Jackie’s head came up and his voice rose. He looked at every person surrounding him, jiggling his knee up and down in agitation. ‘No more! Kev’s gone. Nothing can be done. No cops, no nothing.’ He held his fingers to his lips.
Bob caught Dave’s gaze and inclined his head towards the house.
‘Can you show me, Charlie?’ Dave asked in a low voice.
He nodded and pointed in the direction of the house.
‘No, boy. No!’ Jackie’s voice broke, but Charlie and Dave kept walking, ignoring the old man’s pleas, while Bob sat there and listened.
‘Do you know what happened?’ Dave asked Charlie as they walked away.
‘Nope. I woke up early and felt there was something different. The dogs had barked a lot during the night and that’s not normal. When I got up, the old men were sitting around the fire. That’s unusual too, so I went to sit with them, waiting to hear what was wrong.’ He bent down and pointed at a spot on the ground. ‘That’s blood, I think.’ He paused as Dave looked down and took a photo. ‘Someone came into the community but we didn’t hear them in time to stop them.’
‘Do you know if anyone woke up before you did?’
Charlie shrugged.
Cyril fell into step with them. ‘I reckon I saw something,’ he said.
Dave turned to look at him. ‘Can you tell me?’
‘Got up to take a piss. The dogs woke me. Went out and was doing my business, and I heard a thump at the main house. The dogs let off another round of barking and I told ’em to shut up. Someone else had yelled out earlier when they’d been barking, so they must’ve been sneaking up on foot, I reckon.’
Dave stopped walking and turned to look at him. ‘You didn’t go to investigate?’
Cyril shook his head. ‘Nah. Coulda been a roo hopping through. Sometimes those big fellas, they make thumping noises like that. Still could’ve been roos.’ He shrugged. ‘We mind our own business here.’
Dave nodded. ‘What was the moon doing last night? Would these people have been able to see without torches?’
‘Yeah, not well, but enough. Specially if you know the country. It was a half moon, but that’s plenty bright enough to get by.’
Jotting down that information in his notebook, Dave said, ‘Let’s go and check out the house then.’
‘Here,’ Charlie called. He had walked on ahead and was now standing in front of the house, pointing at the ground. ‘Drag marks.’
Dave took the camera from the bag and looked at the tracks. ‘Looks more like toe marks, doesn’t it?’ he said, more to himself than anyone else. ‘And there doesn’t look to be any other sign of struggle, so maybe they knocked him out.’ He snapped another couple of photos. ‘Let’s go inside.’
‘Here, Dave,’ Charlie pointed again. ‘More blood.’
Bending down, Dave looked at the small spots. Drips, almost. Not a lot of flow, so not a large wound, but enough to leave a trail. And to suggest he was only unconscious, not dead. Well, not from blood loss anyway.
Dave followed the trail up the steps and looked around the front entrance to the house. It was sparsely furnished—a table, chairs and off to the side an office with a computer sitting on the desk and a phone alongside it. On the wall, Dave could see a large map of Spinifex Downs and marks to show what paddocks the cattle were in. A whiteboard with lists of jobs and phone numbers was hanging next to it.
On the other side was the bedroom. A double bed with tangled sheets and blood. Again, it didn’t look like there had been much of a struggle. Nothing upturned or tipped over.
Dave took more photos in silence, while Charlie and Cyril stood at the doorway, their backs turned. They didn’t want to see.
Dave followed the drops of blood back outside and down the steps. ‘Can you boys follow this trail?’ he asked. ‘I can see it when it’s easy like now, but I might need you fellas a bit up there where the ground gets hard.’
‘Jimbo is already on it, boss,’ Charlie said. ‘He’s tracked ’em to the bush over there. Come on. Harry went and got him earlier. He’s the best tracker of all of us.’
‘Hang on, I need to take photos of what we’re seeing and draw a map of where they’ve dragged him to.’
‘No time for that. Let’s go.’ Charlie was already striding off, leaving Dave no choice but to follow.
Five minutes later they were deep in the bush and Jimbo was standing still, looking at something on the ground.
‘What have you got?’ Dave asked as he got closer.
‘See here. Drag marks of Kev’s feet and two footprints on either side, but here’—he pointed to broken branches and a scuff mark—‘he’s fallen over and then there’s only one set of prints dragging him.’
‘So we’ve got two perps. One who’s hurt himself and one who’s still draggin’ our boy?’
‘Think so. See, ’cause the way on
e of ’em walks has changed too. One footprint, rather than two. It’s deeper in the soil, which means he’s putting more weight on it. He’s hopping. And, here, more broken sticks as he’s held on for balance.’ He pointed to a snapped branch.
Dave took more photos of the tracks. ‘Still blood?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, here and here.’ Jimbo indicated some spots Dave would never have noticed. The soil had sucked the blood into the earth, leaving only a dark spot on the ground.
‘Come on,’ Jimbo indicated for them to follow. ‘Here are some ute tracks. They head off in the direction of Cassia Plains.’
Dave, now out on the road, looked around. Strange that they should head towards Cassia Plains when he was sure it had been Boyd and Kit. They hadn’t found anything to link Dylan to the investigation. Trying to put them off? Slowly, he turned in a full circle, listening and looking. ‘How far is the community from here?’ he asked.
‘About five hundred metres that way,’ Jimbo said, pointing north.
‘That’s the same direction as Cassia Downs, so how did they get by you without you hearing?’
‘Dogs were barking and the wind hides sounds.’
‘You would have seen the lights of the ute.’
‘Not if they didn’t have them on.’
‘It was light enough to drive without them? Driving’s different to walking.’
‘This road is wide until you get past the creek. After that they could have put the lights on and we wouldn’t have seen anything.’
Dave nodded and wrote some notes. ‘Guess we need to follow the tracks as far as we can,’ he said, squatting down and taking more pictures.
‘Jimbo’s your man,’ Cyril said. ‘He’ll help.’
‘Good. Come on, let’s head back to Bob.’
‘What have you got?’ Bob asked Dave as they walked into the camp area.
Dave noted that Bob was still sitting with Jackie, and by the frustrated look on Bob’s face, he hadn’t had any luck in getting the Elders to talk to him.
‘Certainly drag marks and blood. Jimbo’s happy to track for us.’ He glanced across at Jackie, who held his hands up.
‘I told him and now I’ll tell you—I’m not talking to the coppers.’
Dave kept talking. ‘He’s been taken from the bedroom without a struggle. Somehow they’ve overpowered him and I reckon he’s been rendered unconscious because there hasn’t been a struggle while they’ve carried him to the ute. Just some drops of blood.’
‘Murder?’
Dave shook his head. ‘I don’t think there’s enough blood to indicate that, unless death was caused by something else, like strangling.’ He glanced at Jackie as he spoke, hoping he’d see a softening in his stance.
Nothing.
‘Have you found the camera?’ Bob asked.
Dave looked at him aghast. ‘I’d forgotten all about it. I wonder if the other blokes know where it was situated.’
One of the Elders spoke. ‘Kev didn’t tell anyone where he’d put them.’
‘Bugger it. Right, let’s go and ring Glenn,’ Bob said and got up from the ground. He looked at Jackie, who refused to meet his eye. ‘Not going to get any help here.’
A feeling of frustration swelled in Dave’s chest. All the inroads they’d made with the community had been thwarted by this kidnapping. Surely they’d want to find Kevin and get him back alive?
‘I’ll find him, Jackie,’ Bob told the man and turned away to follow Dave.
‘Glenn, mate, we’ve got an incident out here at Spinifex Downs. Young Kev has been taken by two suspects. I need you to organise eyes in the air for me.’
‘What? Who’s taken him?’ Glenn’s disbelief was obvious even from three hundred kilometres away.
‘We believe Boyd Shepard is one suspect.’
There was silence on the end of the phone. ‘Surely not. He’s part Aboriginal. He’s from that community.’
‘Raised by his white father, from what I understand.’
‘Yeah, but the Aborigines don’t turn on their own.’
‘Well, there’s an exception to every rule. We found a rigid body truck at his station out of Gassy Junction, covered in red dirt. I’ve got proof he’s sold red Brahman cattle through the saleyards recently. And he’s Kit’s half-brother, as you know, which makes me a little suspicious since the first lot of cattle went out through Deep-Water’s yards.’
He paused. ‘You know, Glenn, you said you had a lot of information on most of the people around here. And you’ve been saying all along that there’s a lot of history between the white and Aboriginal stations. What else has happened between the Redman-Shepard camp and the community at Spinifex Downs?’
Glenn was silent for a moment. ‘All I can tell you is the folklore. It was well before my time, a different generation.’
‘Give me the rundown so I know what I’m dealing with.’
‘Kit’s father got a woman from that community pregnant. He didn’t treat her well so she came back to her family, had the baby and then went walkabout. She was found dead and the baby alive. As the father, he had the right to take his son and raise him in the white man’s world, which he did.’
Silence hummed down the line.
‘See, I have a problem with that story because a baby is so small and tiny and would dehydrate so much quicker than an adult woman. Has anyone ever thought that perhaps he murdered her and took the child?’ Bob finally asked.
‘No one has ever said that. Not even a whisper.’
‘Hmm,’ Bob said as he remembered some of the comments from the Elders.
White man’s law doesn’t look out for us.
Because no one bothered to follow it through.
Dave ran inside Kevin’s homestead holding a security camera in one hand with a smile on his face. Bob looked at him quizzically but continued to talk to Glenn.
‘Okay, if you could get eyes in the sky. We’re looking for a ute headed towards Cassia Plains. Stay in contact, okay?’
‘Sure thing.’
Bob hung up the phone and stood up. ‘What have you got?’
‘Check this out,’ Dave said. ‘Harry brought the camera back here. Here’s the image.’ He held out the camera. On the screen was a grainy photo of a white ute.
‘Can you enlarge that in any way?’
‘I’ll connect it to Kevin’s computer.’ Dave fossicked through the top drawer of the desk until he found a likely looking cable, connected the camera to the computer and flicked the mouse. A shot came up. ‘See here. Here’s the numberplate. Same as the one that Boyd was driving when we pulled up at Kit’s place a couple of nights ago.’
‘Is there anything that shows us who was driving? Tell me that camera has got night vision?’
Dave smiled. ‘Sure has.’ He flicked across and there, outlined against green grainy background, were two faces. Boyd Shepard and Kit Redman were staring through the windscreen, their eyes on the road as they drove.
‘Got ’em,’ Bob said. He turned to Dave in a hurry. ‘You get on the road. You said one of the boys could follow the tracks? Take him with you and see where they go, but for fuck’s sake, make sure you stay in touch. I’ll cordon this area off and make it a crime scene.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I reckon they’ve got maybe three hours’ head start on you, and you’ve got about eight hours of daylight left. They’ll be travelling quicker now the sun’s up and you’ll be able to go quickly too. We’ll get that plane up ASAP. The pilot’ll be able to radio you info.’
Dave nodded and started to jog down the steps.
‘Channel 40,’ Bob yelled out. ‘Keep the two-way on channel 40 and make sure you’ve got the sat phone out.’
Chapter 34
‘Dumb fuck,’ Boyd said as he drove the ute away from the community, the moonlight helping him see the way.
His headlights weren’t picking up the road as well as they should—one was out after he’d hit a roo early on.
‘We wouldn’t have had to do this if that idio
t had kept his mouth shut and listened to the old people.’ He turned the wheel sharply to avoid a pothole. The wheel clipped the edge and they bumped heavily along the road. He swore as the steering wheel was reefed out of his hand.
‘Jesus, slow it down a bit, mate,’ Kit said, hanging onto the handrail. ‘Last thing we need is to have an accident with Kev on board.’
Boyd glanced over at his brother and shook his head. ‘We should be getting out of here as fast as we can. Anyway, I’ve been on this road enough to know where the tricky bits are.’
‘Have you been coming over here?’
‘Yeah. At night, when everyone is sleeping. I come and I watch the old people. Make sure they don’t tell anyone anything. Last time I was here, I went and stood at the end of Jackie’s bed. I did that to remind him. Remind him that the people from Spinifex Downs need to keep their mouth shut about what happens out here.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Stared at me. But I scared him. I know I did.’
‘Didn’t work,’ Kit said in a defeated tone. ‘They still talked.’
The ute bumped on and Boyd put his foot down even harder. ‘I reckon those coppers will turn up real quick.’
Kit nodded. ‘Yeah, they’re not going to stick to any of the unwritten laws we have up here. That’s the bloody problem when you bring outsiders in.’
‘You got Glenn tucked in?’
‘No need. He already knows the rules. Shouldn’t be any trouble with him.’
Boyd glanced over. ‘What, you haven’t paid him off?’
‘Nope. Was never going to. He’s my mate.’
‘He’s a copper! Fuck, you’ve left him to chance?’
‘Sure have. He’ll be fine,’ Kit said confidently. ‘Where are we going to leave him?’ Kit nodded towards the back seat.
‘Gonna stash him out in one of the old bunkers on Crown land. Leave a bit of water and shoot through. When he comes to, he’ll be able to get himself back home again.’ Boyd pushed his foot down harder and the ute sped up. ‘That’ll teach them to get involved with coppers. They were never my people. Remember how Dad used to tell us stories about how they didn’t go looking for Mum? If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead, and they have to pay for that. Pay for not loving a white man’s kid.
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