Murderer's Thumb

by Beth Montgomery

  Mongrel, who was standing on the back of the tray with his gun and a stubbie resting on top of the cabin, whistled as they approached. The two rabbits that had ventured closest paused, sat on their haunches, looked around.

  Loody motioned for Adam to shoot. ‘Take the one on the left, Mongrel’s got the other one covered,’ he whispered.

  Adam braced himself across the bonnet of the Rodeo, flicked the safety catch, lifted the gun to his shoulder and fired.

  Crack! Crack!

  Adam’s quarry zigzagged crazily back into the protection of the bushes. The other rabbit had flung itself sideways then lay still.

  ‘I got him,’ Mongrel said grinning.

  His voice sounded tinny to Adam’s ringing ears. Now he knew why they wore earmuffs at the Olympics. His shoulder stung from the kickback; it was harder than he had anticipated.

  ‘Get in. We’ll drive round for a bit, over the other side of the hill. We’ve spooked them here,’ Loody said.

  At the end of the night Adam had drunk three stubbies and fired six shots and not hit a thing. The beer in his system made his bladder full, his head fuzzy and his mouth as bitter as banana skin. He had to keep squinting to keep his double vision under control. As they drove for home a dark shape lying on the edge of the road was lit up in their headlights.

  ‘Fresh one,’ Loody commented. ‘Wasn’t here on our way through.’

  Mongrel pulled over and kept the engine running. The lights revealed a kangaroo, its legs askew, its neck bent at an unnatural angle.

  Adam wondered why Mongrel and Loody were getting out. It wasn’t as if the carcass was in the middle of the road. Loody loped over to the beast, bent and felt in its pouch like a mugger looting through coat pockets for a wallet. He pulled out a spindly joey, all legs, tail and ears. The size of a rabbit, it hung limply, as Loody clasped it around the feet. Adam thought it must be dead. But then it moved: twitched and arched its body violently and Loody reacted, dashing its head on the bitumen.

  Watching from the inside of the vehicle, Adam fumbled for the door handle. What was Loody thinking? He didn’t have to kill it. They could have taken it home and bottle-fed it. There was that wildlife rescue hotline they could ring. He’d seen the signs advertising the number on the way into Redvale. Adam spilled out of the cabin and shouted, ‘What did you do that for?’

  Loody was walking back to them, laughing. ‘What? You gonna feed it every hour of the day for the next six months? Don’t think so. You poor bleeding heart!’

  Mongrel was up on the tray, laughing too. ‘Watch it! The city kid’s getting sick in the guts again.’

  Furious, Adam walked away. He was desperate for a piss.

  ‘Where you going, Stats? Long walk home?’ Mongrel laughed.

  ‘I’m having a leak,’ he said. He left the road, stumbled over the verge and stopped at the edge of the scrub. As Adam relieved himself, he looked up and away from the Rodeo and its glaring lights. The night sky was hard to see clearly with such a harsh light behind him, but Adam could still make out the Dog Star, Sirius, and the constellation of Orion with its major star Betelgeuse. He took a deep breath. The stars were so majestic, so awesome that he longed to share his knowledge about them, point them out to others. But what would these idiots care? Fucking Neanderthals. They’d just think he was a complete nerd.

  As Adam stood in the blackness at the side of the road he heard shots. Crack, crack, crack, crack!

  Mongrel and Loody were on the back of the tray, firing at the road kill. The carcass rocked gently as each round of pellets hit.

  Brainless. Totally fucking brainless. A week ago Adam would have thought them totally harmless too. But now he’d seen them shoot. He knew how quickly Mongrel snapped and how cruel Loody could be. If they wanted the diary badly enough they’d play nasty, Adam was certain. They were both heartless killers, that was for sure. If they had killed Emma he’d have to find evidence to nail them.

  FIFTEEN

  It was Saturday morning and the first time Adam had milked with the Brolga. For some reason her presence made the whole routine feel different. It wasn’t the way she spoke to Adam or Loody. It was the way she worked the cows in her tight pink rubber gloves. Her movements weren’t fluid and natural like Matt’s and Loody’s. She was awkward and jerky, holding her head to the side as she put the cups on, the way Adam felt he must have been on his first attempt. But the Brolga had milked for years. Why did she look like a beginner?

  She caught Adam staring at her. She smiled with empty eyes. Must be the tranquillisers dulling her brain, taking the sharpness out of her gaze, Adam thought. Perhaps they affected her coordination too. But it was no wonder she used them. She must be so screwed up with grief.

  Later when Adam was hosing down the yard she walked over to him. ‘Are you having breakfast with us this morning?’

  ‘Er, no…maybe tomorrow.’

  She pulled her hair back behind her ears, then dropped her hands by her side, bony fingers fldgeting. ‘You’re most welcome, you know.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I…I wanted to ask you about last week, at the silage pit.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Adam waited for her to go on, but she just stood there wringing her hands. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Tell me what you saw,’ she said.

  Adam hesitated. He didn’t want to bruise her more with careless words. ‘I saw some bones and a shoe.’

  ‘You didn’t see her bag? If we could find that, it might help us understand…we could check her phone…’

  ‘Her phone?’

  ‘Mmm. See who it was that rang her…told her to sneak out of the house.’

  Adam shook his head. ‘No. There was no bag. No phone.’

  She walked away, head down, fingers working furiously.

  When Adam finished hosing, Loody handed him a plastic milk bottle filled with milk straight from the vat. ‘Compliments of the Thackerays,’ he said, filling a second bottle for himself. ‘Drink it before any stuff you’ve got in the fridge ’cause it hasn’t been pasteurised.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s all right?’

  ‘Nothing wrong with it. Straight from the cow.’

  ‘No, I mean, tapping their milk like that.’

  ‘It’s the Saturday morning reward. She always gives me a bottle.’

  ‘So you’re not really nicking it.’

  ‘Nah,’ he said, tilting his head to one side and squinting, ‘but what about you? Did you pinch anything from the tractor shed yesterday?’

  ‘I already told you…I wasn’t pinching anything,’ Adam said. Loody was a pain in the arse.

  Loody frowned and screwed the lid on his milk bottle. ‘I reckon you’re after that missing diary.’

  Adam laughed it off. ‘Nah. What would I want that for?’

  Loody scratched at a bit of dried cow shit that clung to his hairy forearm. ‘I thought, seeing as you’ve got copper’s blood and everything, thought you’d be bustin’ a gut to find it.’

  ‘Aren’t you and Mongrel making a big deal out of all this?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well it was just a journal…someone’s opinions and notes,’ Adam said. He watched Loody’s face for a reaction. The cowboy tipped his head to one side and puffed out his chest. Standard defence. Adam continued to spin the story. ‘According to Matt it was just a book of scribbles.’

  ‘According to Matt…’ Loody mimicked. ‘Don’t take any notice of what Matt says. He’s got no fucken idea.’

  ‘Why? Because he’s simple?’

  ‘Well…yeah.’

  Adam scoffed. ‘Matt knows more than you think.’

  ‘What would you know, Mr Private Eye? Think you’ve got the whole household sussed, have you?’

  Adam could see he was winding Loody up. He kept his voice calm. ‘I didn’t say that. I just think Matt’s not the loser you reckon he is.’

  ‘You don’t know him, mate. You’ve only been here five minutes and you’re an eggspurt on him.’


  Adam laughed at the way Loody spoke. ‘No, no. All I’m saying is the way he talks, it’s a defence, he protects himself.’

  Loody seemed to relax his stance. ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

  ‘Well, think about it. How did he react when Emma disappeared?’

  ‘Fuck, I don’t know. It was six years ago, not last week.’

  Adam was sure he was avoiding the questions. He was hiding something. ‘So you can’t remember?’

  The cowboy scratched his neck and squinted. ‘Well… he didn’t say much to anyone, not for weeks. The cops talked to him a couple of times, or tried to. He put them off…you know.’ Loody paused. The corner of his mouth flickered. ‘But he was out that night and no one knows when he got back home. I say that’s strange.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  Loody’s eyes flashed. He seemed to be enjoying this. ‘Matt said he’d dropped them off at the party and went to check out an owl along the ridge or some shit so he wasn’t there when they came home. He used to always go up there to watch bloody birds.’

  ‘Where?’

  Loody walked out the doorway, waited for Adam to follow, then pointed north. ‘You go up that track, there’s a few dead trees on the boundary between here and old Byrd’s farm.’

  A dirt road led along past the milking yards and climbed higher where a thin line of mature gum trees and a fence crossed the ridge. Beyond, at the top of the hill was the small shed Adam had seen earlier. It had to be the shack where Emma and Lina went on Friday nights.

  ‘And he drove there?’ Adam said incredulously.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Two hundred metres?’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Could’ve walked.’

  Loody shrugged. ‘Well that’s where he reckoned he was, except he didn’t tell them till they threatened to lock him up. Said he didn’t want them disturbing the nest. As if the cops would give a shit. No, I reckon he was some place else.’

  Adam ignored Loody’s loaded words. It was obvious that he was trying to point the finger at Matt. ‘That shack over there, on the top of the hill. What’s that?’ Adam said.

  ‘Old Byrd’s joint. They store turnips in it.’

  ‘You been there before?’

  Loody put on his tough-guy squint again. ‘Me? Nah. Mongrel knows it better than me. It’s his grandparents’ old place.’ He shut the milking shed door with a clunk and headed for his ute.

  Adam smiled to himself. Loody was definitely lying. ‘So what did Matt think about Emma and her boyfriends?’ Adam said trailing him.

  Loody sniggered. ‘Didn’t know most of the time. She did her best to keep it from the family, especially Colin. He’d go psycho if he found her with anyone. Matt knew about a couple of blokes. He’d follow her around when he saw them with her, as if he was protecting her.’

  ‘Like a chaperone?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ Loody said frowning. ‘But she had a go at him, told him to lay off and you know what he did?’

  Adam shook his head.

  ‘Cut all her hair off the first time, when she was asleep.’

  ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘Nah, and the second time he cut the clothes in her wardrobe to shreds.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Didn’t want her tarted up, he said, because she wouldn’t spend any time with him when she was with another bloke. He’s a pretty fucked unit, eh? Capable of anything, I reckon.’

  ‘Sounds weird,’ Adam admitted. It was a different strategy from the ones Kazek used, but it amounted to the same thing: possessiveness.

  They reached Loody’s ute. Loody took an esky from the tray and stashed his bottle of milk inside. He opened the car and put the esky on the floor. ‘Going down the hill for breakfast?’ he said, slamming the door.

  ‘What, to the Thackerays?’

  ‘Yeah, Olwyn’s got it all laid out.’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ Adam said. He strolled past the cypress trees and entered his yard. The house seemed quiet. Rosemary was probably still in bed.

  ‘See you at six tomorrow then,’ Loody called. He trudged down the driveway to the Thackerays’ house, his gumboots raising the dust.

  Adam decided to make his own breakfast of bacon and eggs. He was ravenous. All the ingredients were there but he couldn’t find the egg rings. That irritated him. Nothing was worse than eggs that slopped into crazy shapes, oozing white all over the pan. Eggs confined to rings were simple to dish up and the pan was easier to clean. Annoyed, but hungry, he started cooking without them.

  The conversation with Loody bothered him. According to Lina, Loody was with them in the shack, yet he denied ever being there. Why? Did the shed hold some secret, some clue to Emma’s death?

  Obviously Loody was quite prepared to lie. The more Adam got to know Loody the less he liked him. At first it was just the cowboy image, but now it was the rest of his personality. The guy was a shithead, sucking up to Mongrel and the Thackerays, spreading rumours and tall stories about Matt. Adam couldn’t imagine Matt shredding anyone’s clothes, let alone cutting off their hair. He wasn’t deranged and violent.

  The thing was though, Loody could be. Adam recalled what Lina had written about him torturing animals. That’s what psychopaths did. And the way he killed that joey last night sickened him. It was possible that Loody was the murderer. Those strong forearms could bludgeon someone over the head, carry a body and dig a grave. Easy!

  The trouble was Adam could imagine Mongrel or even Colin doing the same thing. Both of them were pumped with aggression. But whenever Adam considered Matt, it didn’t fit. Matt was the bird-watcher, the man who was gentle with cows, soothing their fears just by touching them. Adam knew Matt was weird, but it had to be shyness. Nothing more.

  The slam of the fridge door jolted Adam from his thoughts. It was Rosemary. ‘How come we’ve got milk? We finished the bottle last night.’

  ‘Morning, Mum. Didn’t see you creep in.’

  ‘You’re in a bright mood.’

  ‘Just wide awake, that’s all. The milk’s from the dairy. Loody gave it to me.’

  ‘Perks of the job?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He used the edge of the eggflip to shift the bacon. It sizzled and curled, spitting fat. ‘Want some?’

  She peered at his cooking and wrinkled her nose. ‘Too greasy.’

  Boring, Adam mouthed. He turned an egg and watched the yolk spill sideways like blood from a wounded creature. ‘I’m having breakfast at Matt’s tomorrow.’

  Rosemary was pouring muesli into a bowl. She raised an eyebrow, ‘More perks?’

  ‘Think so.’

  ‘What time will that finish? I’m going out tomorrow from ten till three. There’s a pottery workshop in Booradoo over the next three Sundays.’

  Adam glared at her. He couldn’t stand her pottery. She’d taken it up as a relaxation technique four years ago and now it was her obsession; she produced hundreds of useless objects that cluttered the shelves.

  ‘I’m not asking you to come along.’

  ‘As if I’d go anyway. Bunch of clay-smeared wannabes.’

  ‘Adam! You don’t even know them,’ she protested.

  ‘Probably just a group of neurotics indulging in art therapy like you.’

  She shot him a dirty look. ‘You really are vicious sometimes, Adam.’

  ‘Only when it’s got to do with pottery,’ he said.

  After breakfast Adam decided to call Snake. Loody’s lie about the shack had reinforced Snake’s warnings. It was clear that Loody was hiding something. He was the one to be wary of, not Snake.

  Adam was startled to hear a female voice on the line.

  ‘Pattersons. This is Toot.’

  ‘Oh, I…I want to talk to Snake,’ he stammered.

  ‘Who’s calling?’

  ‘Adam.’

  ‘Man of the moment.’

  ‘Er, what?’

  ‘Snake was just talking about you, said you take a mea
n specky,’ she said.

  Adam felt his face colour. His marking skills weren’t that great. Why were they really talking about him? Suspicion stirred in his gut.

  ‘Hang on. I’ll just get him,’ she said.

  Moments later Snake answered.

  ‘What were you just talking to Toot about?’ Adam asked.

  ‘Football.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ said Adam sceptically.

  ‘No shit. She’s a connoisseur, she’s thinking of doing an umpire’s course next year.’

  ‘Sure,’ Adam said, but he felt uneasy. Why were they talking about him? That phrase—man of the moment— what did she mean? And then Adam realised it wasn’t what Toot had said that bothered him, but the tone of her voice. She wanted to talk to him. He must be imagining it. He shrugged away the impression.

  ‘I’ve got some news,’ he said.

  ‘Did you find it?’ Snake said.

  ‘Yep. I’ll bring it over. Meet you at the Castlebrook Road turnoff at ten o’clock.’

  ‘You’re on.’

  SIXTEEN

  Adam rode his bike down the driveway, rattled over the cattle grid then turned left onto Redvale Road. He had to ride past the silage paddock to get to Castlebrook Road, about four kilometres away. The sun had begun to sting and the air was still. Insects chirped in the dry grass along the verges. By the time he reached the turnoff his arms prickled from the heat and the brow of his helmet was wet.

  Snake was leaning against a huge gum tree, Sarge standing beside him. Except for the flick of its tail, the horse stood motionless. Its ears swivelled as it heard Adam approach, then it turned and gave a throaty snicker.

  Adam braked but kept his distance from the horse. ‘Is he OK with the bike?’

  ‘He’s fine. Won quietest mount four years running at the Booradoo Show.’

  Snake grabbed a fistful of mane and swung himself onto Sarge’s back. The horse lumbered onto the road and headed for Snake’s house.

  ‘So where’s the diary? Did you bring it?’ Snake asked.

  Adam pedalled beside them, tapping at the back pocket of his jeans. ‘In here.’ He told Snake how he’d found part two the night before. ‘There’s a part three hidden on the “fate line” somewhere.’