Murderer's Thumb

by Beth Montgomery

  Snake rummaged around and found a crushed packet of chips. As he pulled it clear a textbook fell to the floor. He picked it up, threw it back on the pile and slammed the door. ‘So if it doesn’t tell you the gory details, what does it say?’ he said.

  ‘That’s just it. It’s just about the Thackerays and who Emma’s been on with.’

  ‘Serious?’

  ‘Yeah, Lina was spying on her.’

  ‘Sick!’ Snake said grimacing. ‘So how are you going to find the rest of it?’

  ‘I’m working on it. Come round this arvo and I’ll show you what I reckon.’ Adam would tell him about the clues later. They were his speciality, something Adam shared with Lina, his strength, and another reason why he wouldn’t show the diary to the police. He was sure the cops would be too dumb to work out the cryptic clues. He could imagine them scratching their heads, trying to get the gist of them. The whole process would be stalled or worse, totally forgotten.

  Even confiding in Snake was a risk, but he wanted to test him one more time, just to be sure. If the whole town learned that Adam had the diary, then he’d know Snake was a liability.

  In the meantime there was still the latest clue to decipher. If he deleted the letter ‘i’, the first person in ‘thirds’, then he had the necessary letters to un-jumble. He’d tackle it in his spare period.

  The boys trudged up the driveway in the afternoon glare. By the time they reached the old farmhouse Adam’s back was drenched with sweat. They flung off their schoolbags, went inside and downed two glasses of water each before they shut themselves in Adam’s room. He gave Snake the diary.

  His friend sat on the floor, flicking through the pages, biting his bottom lip.

  Adam leant forward on his chair, watching. Had he done the right thing?

  Finally Snake looked up and smiled. ‘Fuck, this is brilliant,’ he said. ‘It’s genuine all right. If Mongrel knew about this he’d break your door down.’

  ‘That’s why you don’t say anything, right?’ Adam said. His voice had a desperate ring to it. ‘If he finds out he could stuff up my chances of finding the rest of it.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t give him the satisfaction, but maybe Barry Timothy…’

  ‘No way! I don’t trust him. He did bugger all when Emma disappeared. As if he…he didn’t care or didn’t want to…maybe he was covering for someone.’

  Snake looked shocked. ‘Piss off! He’s a country copper. He’s straight.’

  Adam lowered his voice. ‘How do you know? How can anyone ever know if another person is trustworthy, even if they are a cop?’

  ‘You’re just paranoid,’ Snake scoffed. ‘So, how the hell do we find the next part when the clue’s so weird? Race to thirds?’

  ‘It’s cryptic.’

  ‘So what’s it mean? You’re Mr Puzzle Man, you must have worked it out by now.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘So where do we start looking?’

  ‘In the buildings around here. The Mount of Venus is Lina’s code for this part of the farm.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘That palmistry hand on the website, remember.’

  Snake looked confused.

  Adam laid his left hand flat in front of Snake. ‘The shape of this farm is basically a hand. Mount of Venus, here,’ Adam said pointing to the base of his thumb. That’s where the sheds are. The palm is the fields of Mars, where the dam is and most of the paddocks.’

  ‘I get it. And the road goes around your fingers.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘But if you want to search the sheds we can’t pull everything apart in broad daylight.’

  ‘We can if you’re the lookout. Everyone’s milking—well Loody, Colin and Matt—it just leaves the Brolga we need to watch for.’

  ‘The Brolga—I like that. How am I going to keep an eye on her? And don’t forget your mum.’

  ‘Stuff her. She won’t know what’s going on.’ He opened the bedroom door. ‘Come here.’ He led Snake into the spare room and pointed at the telescope. ‘We’ll put this on the verandah. You can see down to Matt’s house and if you move it one hundred and eighty degrees, like this,’ he demonstrated by pulling a lever and swinging the tube around, ‘…you can see right inside the milking room door.’

  ‘Cool. Where’d you get it?’

  ‘Mum got it…some camera place. I said I’d only move to the bush if she bought me one. It’s my chill out tube: relax and watch the stars!’

  ‘You are seriously weird,’ Snake muttered.

  Once the boys had the telescope set, Adam gave instructions. ‘I’ll check out the tractor shed first. If you see anyone moving, shout as loud as you can.’

  ‘Sure,’ Snake said peering through the eyepiece. ‘Hey, how come everything’s upside down?’

  ‘It’s refraction.’ When Adam saw the confused expression on Snake’s face he added, ‘Don’t worry about it, just keep looking where I told you.’

  He jogged up the road, his heart pounding. The cryptic clue had been easy to solve. The letters rearranged themselves to ‘tractor shed’. All he had to do was search quickly.

  He made straight for the cupboard at the back. The words ‘with a cross’ could only mean one thing: inside the cupboard with the cross burnt into it. He pulled open the door and took out a wad of exercise books, pamphlets and papers. He flicked through them: spraying programs, calibration sheets, a guide to farm poisons. A small exercise book with the title ‘Spray Diary’ caught his attention. It didn’t sit flat. There were folded scraps of notepaper inside. He rushed to open them, then sighed when he saw the contents: lists of bird species with dates of sightings. Must be Matt’s scribblings. Adam put the papers back in the diary and continued to rummage, but couldn’t recognise anything that Lina might have written.

  Frustrated, he returned it all to the cupboard and shut the doors. He stared at the crooked calendar. What did she mean by ‘with a cross’? Unless it was an ‘x’, not a Christian cross. He scanned the shed walls looking for an x, like on a pirate map.

  ‘Over here, over here!’ he heard Snake shout.

  Adam dashed from the shed and sprinted down the driveway. The Brolga had started up her car and was reversing out of the garage. Adam reached the verandah just as she drove past. She gave the boys an odd look.

  ‘Shit that was close!’ Adam puffed.

  ‘Yeah, and don’t look now,’ Snake said with the telescope pointed at the milking shed. ‘Loody saw you leave the tractor shed. He was in the doorway of the milk room when I shouted. I swung the telescope round so it wasn’t obvious I was perving at the Brolga, and he was right there, watching you run out. Did you find anything?’

  Adam shook his head.

  ‘So what do we tell Loody if he asks?’

  ‘Say we’re just mucking around with the telescope, an experiment… like…playing forty forty…you know, how you have to run to base and free the prisoners before you get seen.’

  ‘As if we’re eight years old? Get real!’

  ‘Got any better ideas?’

  This time Snake shook his head.

  Later that night Adam watched a car crawl up the driveway. The headlights were like two burning globes, blinding him. He pulled away from the eyepiece and rubbed his bad eye. It was simply a habit; he never used it to look through the telescope.

  The car was lost for a moment behind the sheds before it turned down to the new brick house. Must have been Colin, returning from the pub. Adam checked his watch. It was twenty past eleven. Surely everyone would be in bed soon.

  He packed up the telescope and put it in the spare room. The house was silent except for the ticking of the kitchen clock. He padded past Rosemary’s room and paused, listening for her breath. Satisfied she was asleep, he grabbed his torch and snuck outside.

  Finally he had a chance to look for the diary, but he was without Snake. Now he was on his own in the dark, pacing up the dusty driveway towards the tractor shed, switching his torch on and off
at intervals, hoping he wouldn’t be seen. At the entrance to the shed Adam ducked inside and swung the torch beam over the tractors. A rat scurried to a hole under the far wall, but otherwise everything was still.

  A bellow came from outside. Startled, Adam turned off the torch and stood in the darkness, not breathing, heartbeat drumming in his chest.

  The sound came again. It was only a cow, calling from a nearby paddock. Adam took a deep breath. His hands shook. He had to think clearly. A pirate ‘x’ would be too obvious. Even a dickhead like Loody could work that one out. What else could an ‘x’ be? A ten in Roman numerals perhaps. He flicked on the torch and made for the calendar on the cupboard door. On the tenth of October there was a small mark, an arrow, pointing down.

  Adam looked under the bench, nothing but empty drums. But there was another ‘x’ very faint, scratched into the edge of the bench. He remembered the cardboard stuck to the bottom of the bureau in his room. He ran his hand underneath and felt plastic taped to the underside of the bench. Brilliant! He’d found part two.

  THIRTEEN

  Saturday 2 September

  I talked to Matt again today after milking. The Brolga, Emma and Rachel had gone to town—a fitting for the wedding. Matt was walking back to the house. I asked him if he liked other animals like rats, seeing as he liked cows so much. He shrugged and stammered that rats were OK. I said there was one in the garage, dead, and would he get rid of it please. He came over, mumbling something about the cat and how she always left mice and rats in strange places. He said he’d get rid of it. He picked it up by the tail.

  I asked him what made him squeamish, because rats sure didn’t. He looked me square in the eye and said ‘talking, just talking to people’. I smiled at him and agreed. I told him I found it hard to make friends too, that everyone was scared of me because of my spiky hairstyle and how I wore black lipstick. I didn’t tell him I liked it that people were scared. He grinned, couldn’t stop looking at me, and he didn’t go red this time. ‘Got to get ready for footy,’ he said. Then he took the rat away. I felt really powerful after that. I felt like I was taming a wild animal or something, gaining his trust.

  M.T.

  Sunday 3 September

  Emma slept over last night. It was good to have a friend around, not that I’d call her a best friend, or anything, and I guess she’d consider Meredith Patterson her best friend anyway. They’re inseparable at school, and sprawl themselves over the back seat of the bus, unless Emma sits with me. Meredith’s a bit of a snob, though. Ignores me if she can. Probably jealous.

  Emma asked about my family, about my past. I didn’t tell her much. Just told her that Dad died when I was little, and how Mum has no time for me now. Spends her life in the boardroom or in the bedroom with her new husband. I didn’t tell her about taking pills and squatting in derelict houses or meeting Granny Bell when I was smashed out of my brain.

  She told me how obsessed her mum was, how she wouldn’t buy Emma a bra or tampons or anything like that. Rachel gets stuff for her and she has to hide everything. Even Emma mentioning having her period sent the Brolga off. Emma said that mums were supposed to nurture their daughters. Looks like Emma and I bombed out in the mother-daughter department.

  We headed down to the wetlands. Before we’d even left the yard Mongrel drove past. He slowed right down, asked us if we wanted a lift. I saw the way he looked at Emma. How he scanned every curve. It wasn’t right. Not for someone who was about to be her brother-in-law.

  M.T.

  Monday 4 September

  Emma’s got the séance all planned for Friday night. Apparently there’s a shack on old Mr Byrd’s property. He’s Mongrel’s grandfather. Emma said you can almost see the shack from the house here because it runs along the same ridge. If we scale the fences we can walk there, cross-country style. She’s lined up some guys who are interested, but she won’t tell me who. Which pisses me off a bit because I think she’s trying to set me up with someone and I’m only interested in Matt. But I’m willing to play along for now. Anyway we’re meeting after 7.30 and saying we’re watching a DVD at Meredith’s house. Meredith’s in on it too. So maybe Emma’s organised a couple of blind dates.

  I rang Granny Bell yesterday, telling her about the séance. I asked her for any hints and she told me to keep the circle alive and to watch for any sceptics who always try to push the glass. I told her I was still doing the cryptic puzzles in the newspaper. She was impressed.

  M.T.

  Tuesday 5 September

  I wagged school today and wandered around town. I found a good bookshop and got myself a spell book. The op shops were good too. I bought a cool pair of black boots, not like Doc Martens, more witchy, with big square gold buckles. I love them. I found something special for Matt too: a paperweight, with a scene of a cow in the snow. When you upend it the snow flies all around. He’ll love it. It’s his party, not this weekend, but the next.

  I sat over in the park for a while, just chilling out, doing the cryptic in the newspaper. Bloody Frank drove past. So now I’m in the shit with him again. Jane said I have to make more of an effort while I’m here. She said I wouldn’t get a job in town if everyone saw me sitting in the park all day. I told her I’m out of here when I turn sixteen. I’ll be off to the city then and no one will push me around. She said it’s months away yet, so I better just cool it for now. I wish I were like those frogs at the wetlands. I would hang around while it suited, then vanish when the weather dried up, whenever the place gave me the shits.

  M.T.

  Thursday 7 September

  I’ve been too busy to write every day because I’ve been reading.

  I got into trouble at school yesterday because I’d wagged. The year level co-ordinator went off at me. Stupid bitch. She’s so into control.

  I sat on the bus with Emma on the way home. She was amazed that I didn’t cut up bad over it. She reckons she would have burst into tears. I guess I’m used to everyone being pissed off with me. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m not afraid of words. It’s getting hit that scares me. I’ve seen too many kids thumped stupid by pushers and pimps. So glad I never fell that low. I don’t know how anyone could live with someone who bashed them.

  This spell book is really cool. I’ve got a heap of ideas for my own incantations. I’ve been working on a spell to get Matt to invite me to the party. I’ve invented it myself. It involves a pink candle, a calendar and a strand of his hair. I got one of his hairs from his work overalls. They’re hanging up in the back room as you go into their house. Now I just have to get up at dawn and do some meditation on it.

  Tomorrow night is the big session at the shack. Emma’s all wound up about it, asking me how to set up the board. We drew up a board together last night on a big piece of art paper. Homework, eh!

  I hope they do it properly and don’t just muck around.

  M.T.

  Friday 8 September

  I did the spell this morning. I felt really strong. Not long afterwards I saw Matt walk up the path to go milking. I hope it works.

  After school Emma and I climbed the cypress and talked about what we wanted to do when we left school. She wants to do nursing like her sister, Rachel. She says it runs in the family. Her mum trained to be a nurse, but then met Colin, so she never finished.

  Me, I don’t know. Hairdressing isn’t that tempting any more. I don’t want to work in a bank, or kill cows or answer phones or clean floors. But I do like clothes and I do like finding out other people’s secrets.

  Emma’s pissed off with Loody, the dorky apprentice. He keeps eyeing her off and hangs around when she’s doing stuff outside. So now she feeds the calves and does her other chores when he’s milking, so he can’t bother her. I saw him doing fencing work with Matt. His hair is bright orange. Heaps of fire energy. No wonder she can’t stand him.

  I said she could do a spell to try and put him off. She looked scared, but interested. Said her mum would die if she knew. She reckons her mum is a born
again Christian from this weird church in Booradoo where they’re trying to rid the world of evil or some shit. She thinks we’ll all burn in hell if we put a spell on someone. I said it was none of the Brolga’s business.

  She said she’d give it a try after she sees how tonight goes. Only twenty minutes left till I make my trek across the paddocks with her. Should be good.

  M.T.

  Saturday 9 September

  Last night was great. Emma and I got there just before eight. The boys were already there, sitting around one of those tin fire burner things, drinking beer. It was only Mongrel and Loody. That was the bad part.

  The shack was just one room with the fire in the middle. There was a wooden table, the bench seat out of an old car, three kitchen chairs and a few empty chemical drums. The place smelled like dirt and rotten vegetables. Mongrel said they store turnips in there now, but it used to be accommodation for the farm worker eighty years ago. Pretty crappy place to live.

  We hid in the dark and waited for Meredith to turn up. She walked in so terrifled, flashing her torch round, calling out for Emma. She focused on this lump in the corner with a blanket over it, which was Mongrel. She called out, ‘I know you’re hiding…’ then Mongrel went for her, shouting aaghhh! She shat herself. Ran out the door screaming. It was so funny. Emma had to go after her to get her back.

  The ouija board started off badly. The guys wouldn’t take it seriously. They kept laughing and saying dumb things like it was the spirit of Elvis returned, and how could it be? He’s still alive, ha ha! Must have a split personality and all that shit. One of them was shoving the glass too. Probably Loody.

  Then we got through to this spirit called Elaine. Granny Bell would have been impressed. It was so eerie! Elaine said she used to live round here. Died giving birth to her eighth child. Loody looked sick and said he had to go home early because he was milking tomorrow. Piker!