by Paul Howarth
She scoffed and shook her head. “Has it honestly never occurred to you that it wasn’t William they were laughing at, Billy, but you?”
He turned on her so sharply that Katherine flinched, shying from a blow that never came. He hadn’t hit her yet, but he could have, they were both well aware of that. God knows, the other day had proved it. There was violence in Billy, Katherine had seen it, burning right there in his eyes. She’d always believed it was a virtue, a strength. The men she had grown up around were cowards compared to him. But the way it flared up in him these days, the way he looked at her sometimes . . .
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded. Look, will you at least talk to William? Make things right?”
Billy finished his cigarette, ground it roughly on the rail. “I’ve more important things to be worrying about.”
“More important . . . ? Such as?”
He paused and looked directly at her for the first time since she arrived, like he was only now properly seeing her, weighing something in his mind. “There’s to be an inquest,” he said quietly. “That’s why Spencer came. He’s been told to look into the killings, what went on at the house. And then afterward, when we rode out with John and them, raking over their fucking graves. He says I’ll have to testify. Noone’s a part of it too.”
His name hung between them like a taboo. Neither had spoken of the man in years. Katherine said, “Has something happened?”
“Apparently there’s some witness, I don’t bloody know.”
“A witness to what, though?”
The question briefly stalled him. He dismissed it, waved a hand. “Ah, it’s all horseshit anyway. It’s me that’s the victim here, my family they killed. We don’t have nothing to worry about, so Spencer says.”
She remembered sitting with Tommy immediately after, right there on the front steps, talking things over, Tommy nursing his bandaged hand. “Do you know what went on out there?” he had asked her, and Katherine thought she already did. Clearly there’d been fighting, given the injuries they’d sustained, and since there’d not been any arrests she’d assumed at least some Kurrong must have been killed. The rest were driven into the center, or so she’d been told. The men had come home happy, anyway. John, Noone, Raymond Locke. There’d been drinks in the drawing room and a feast of a meal, though when she’d asked about the details, about what they’d done, Noone had raised his finger and silenced her like a precocious little girl.
“But . . . there must be something in it, or why have a hearing at all?”
“It’s nothing. A formality. I just told you.”
“You also said you’re more worried about it than your own son.”
He saw off the whiskey and winced, sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Yeah, well, he’s a lost cause, that one. Anyway, look at me—happy as a pig in shit.”
He flashed a forced grin and walked past her, along the verandah and inside. Katherine stepped up to the railing. Miles of sloping pasture before her, a tranche of ragged scrubland, the low outline of the ranges barely visible beyond. The sun had fallen below the horizon, the sky a sloughy mix of purple and gray. All was darkness out there. She had never been that far into the center, could hardly imagine it; in truth she didn’t dare. A shiver passed through her and she held herself, the skin on her arms pimpling though it was anything but cold, then, still clutching herself tightly, she turned and followed her husband back into the house, for where else did she have to go?
Chapter 20
Tommy McBride
Tommy threw down his cards, collected his winnings, announced he was in need of a piss. The men gave him grief for quitting. He laughed and told them to go to hell. Weaving among the tables, a little unsteady on his feet, through the back door and across the dark yard to the outhouse, a simple shed divided into two narrow stalls. One of the doors was missing. Tommy used the other side. Humming while he did his business, closing his nose against the stench, a fly-filled fog of human waste. He buckled himself and came out gasping, only to find Jack Kerrigan and another man—some bearded old coot—waiting in the yard. He was about to warn them off the outhouse, tell them they were better pissing outside, when he noticed the revolver dangling in Jack’s right hand.
“What’s this? There a problem?”
“You’re fucked, mate,” the old fella said, smirking. “And we’re about to make ourselves bloody rich.”
Tommy looked at Jack, who nodded toward the stranger. “Bloke here reckons he knows you from out east, Bobby. Says you killed the overseer on some sheep station near St. George.”
“I told ye, they call him Tommy: Tommy bloody McBride.”
“That true?” Jack asked. “That your real name?”
Tommy’s gaze slid to the ground.
“And what about this overseer?”
“I pushed him. It was an accident. He’d have shot me otherwise.”
Jack looked up at the heavens and let out a deep sigh, then raised his revolver sideways to the old man’s temple. He flinched and cowered away, flashing panicked glances at Jack. “Hey now, take it easy, didn’t I tell you it was him?”
“You know this snake from back then, Bobby?”
In the gloom of the yard Tommy peered at him, thinking back through all those years. Barren Downs was mostly a blur to him, cut through with memories so vivid and stark they still stung. Cal Burns giving him a kicking, the faces gathered round . . . and among them this man now in front of him, beardless back then maybe, or less unkempt at least, his toothless mouth gaping, that same half-cooked look in his eyes. He’d been at the breakfast table the morning Cal Burns was killed. Alan Ames was his name.
“Yeah, I know him,” Tommy said.
“See! I told ye! Wait—are yous two some kind of mates?”
“Well, shit,” Jack said wearily. “I never thought it would end like this.”
“End what? How d’you mean?” Tommy asked, panic rising, though surely he already knew. Unlikely as it seemed he’d been made by this man: after all this time, out here in the middle of nowhere, in front of the dunny for Christ’s sake, his past had finally caught him up. He’d been a fool to assume it wouldn’t, lulled into a life that couldn’t last. Of all the ways it could have happened: Alan fucking Ames.
Jack said, “You’re gonna have to run, mate.”
“Hold up now. You ain’t cutting me out of that reward money, you bastard. A deal’s a fucking deal!”
“You shut your mouth before I put a hole in you. Bobby, listen—you have to leave. We don’t know who else this bastard’s talked to, or what he might do next.”
“I ain’t told no one, you’re the first—”
Jack jabbed the revolver hard against Ames’s skull. He yelped and stood rigid. Jack said, “Take a couple of horses and whatever supplies you need and get out of here tonight. Head west, Bobby. Stick to the trails you know best.”
Tommy gawped dumbly. He didn’t know any trails out west, and was this really how the two of them were going to part? A flash of hatred surged through him for this fucker, Alan Ames, who had enjoyed his every humiliation back then, and no doubt joined the posse looking to lynch him after he’d fled St. George. Now here he was, years later, trying to do it all again. Well, Tommy wouldn’t let him. He’d rather take the bastard into the scrubs, shoot him and put him in the ground—nobody would find him, nobody would know. It shocked him how easily he thought it. But then, was it really so hard? He had seen it done, many times: men put down like troublesome dogs. And he could do it, he realized suddenly, if that’s what it came to.
“Bobby? Did you hear me? It’s time to move, mate—go!”
“What about him?”
Jack turned to look at the old swagman on the end of his revolver, Ames’s attention flitting between the two of them. “Me and my new friend here are going to go inside and sink a few more beers and forget this conversation ever took place. If he likes he can join my plant for a while, assuming he ain’t afraid of hard wo
rk—”
“Hell, I been working my whole goddamned life.”
“—and can handle cattle as well as sheep. But, if them terms don’t suit him, then I’m going to have to keep him here a while longer, and find another way of convincing the snaky bastard to keep his mouth shut.”
Ames was nodding furiously. Tommy stared at Jack. He still had his right arm extended, his revolver raised; they couldn’t shake hands or embrace without risking Ames getting away. Warmly, Jack smiled at him, the full Jack Kerrigan grin, and it dawned on Tommy that most likely they’d never see each other again. He would find himself looking out for him, in hotels, roadhouses, brothels, whenever he crossed a droving trail; he’d skim the obituaries half-expecting to find his name. He never did. This would be the last contact he ever had with Jack, this man who had saved his life the first time they met and one way or another had been saving it every day since.
“Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”
“On you go now. Take care of yourself.”
“I mean it. You’ve been—”
“Mate, I’ve been standing here with my arm out for long enough as it is. Get the horses and the rest of it, and get yourself west.”
Tommy nodded. A struggle to move his feet. He felt sick at the thought of leaving—he’d rather kill Ames than start his life all over again. But Jack would never allow it. He was far too principled for that. Either way, Tommy would lose him, and he’d rather keep their friendship intact.
“So long then,” he said, moving past them. “Good luck with everything.”
He was almost out of the yard when Jack called “Tommy!” and the shock of hearing his name after all this time, especially from Jack, made him pull up sharply and turn. Jack was looking back at him, over his shoulder, silhouetted in the shadows, his revolver extended; Tommy thought he saw the moonlight glisten in his eyes. “It’s been bloody good knowing you. There aren’t many out there, as you well know, but remember you’re one of the good ones, eh?”
Chapter 21
Henry Wells
The coach arrived in Bewley, and like shipwrecked survivors Henry Wells and Reverend Bean staggered out of the carriage and, in the glare of the brutal sunshine, surveyed the little town. Two rows of mismatched storefronts: crooked verandahs, hand-painted signs, window stencils peeling and frayed. The townspeople silently watched them. Wind whipped dust devils along the sand-and-gravel street. A dog came sniffing by. From the verandah of the hotel opposite someone called out, “Welcome, m’lords!” and like some windup diorama the town clicked back to life again.
Henry cringed at the state of it. It was as dismal a place as he had ever seen. Already his skin was prickling in the unrelenting sun; the very air smelled like it was burning, tinged with a foul odor of shit, sweat, and slop. Beside him, Reverend Bean was pirouetting back and forth, memories assaulting him like blows—“Yes, yes, that’s the courthouse, and there’s the little church . . .”—the town exactly as he had described it, and so pathetic, so innocuous, given the secrets it held.
A man pushing a squeaking handcart paused and spat at their feet.
“Come on,” Henry said quietly, picking up his bags and making for the hotel, Reverend Bean tripping along after him, still twisting himself in knots. He had brought no luggage, boarding the train in Brisbane with only the clothes he stood up in, and an enormous canteen of rum that he’d suckled all journey like a teat. Three trains, two coaches, four miserable days and nights—what Henry needed most, beyond a bath and a meal, was a break from Reverend Bean. The man was insufferable. As was this heat. After crossing the tablelands outside Brisbane and the arable majesty of the Darling Downs, the country had descended into a rolling hellscape of scorched red earth and incessant sun. Henry didn’t know how people stood it, living out here; through the gaps between the buildings he could still make out that endless scrub, the town a tiny atoll in an ocean of desert plains. And now they too were marooned here. Christ, he thought, this better be worth it. We’d better bloody win.
One of the drinkers whistled as they came up the hotel steps. Nobody parted to let them past. “Excuse us, please, gentlemen,” Henry said, squeezing through, into the bar. They presented themselves at the counter—Henry had written ahead—and the bald publican handed over their room keys. No welcome, no pleasantries, sullenly sliding the two fobs over with a large, hairy hand.
“We will eat first, I think,” Henry told him, “assuming you offer meals. An early dinner while hot water is boiled and taken up to our rooms.”
Horace stared right through him. As if he’d not spoken a single word. In the long mirror Henry noticed Reverend Bean ogling the drinks shelf, and added, “Oh, and one more thing. My companion here is not to be served alcohol without my say-so. Not a drop, you understand? He has no money, not a penny to his name, and I shall not be footing his bill. If you serve him you might as well tip your liquor down the drain—do I make myself clear?”
“If you like,” Horace said, glancing at the reverend, who winked at him. Henry swept up the keys. He ordered a carafe of red wine to go with the food, water for Reverend Bean, and found a table near the little raised stage at the back of the room. Quiet in here this afternoon: a man mournfully smoking, another playing dominoes alone. Henry poured the wine, Reverend Bean staring, watching every drop.
“Just one glass,” he pleaded. “Something to wash down the meal.”
“Water’s not wet enough for you?”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do,” Henry said. “I have seen the very worst of you these past few days. You are an addict, Francis, you have absolutely no self-control. But I will need you at your best on the stand.”
“My best,” he echoed, laughing.
“Sober, then.”
“I wouldn’t be any use to you if I was.”
“I will take my chances. It will have to suffice.”
“Truthfully, Henry, I’m more likely to soil myself. I am nothing without the drink—sobriety is far from a pretty sight.”
And this the man, Henry reminded himself, on whom the whole case hung. He smiled in an attempt to make light of the admission. “Well, of course you would say that. Anything to weaken my resolve.”
“But you’ve seen me. You said so yourself. I’m in purgatory here. Please, Henry. Just to help me settle. It’s been terrible these past few days.”
Henry sighed and looked about. The smoking man was watching them, the other still engrossed in his dominoes. He could certainly agree with the reverend on that much, though it had felt more like damnation than purgatory to him. Baking in their train carriage, lying awake in his rickety bunk, Reverend Bean moaning and thrashing beneath him, no chance of sleep; then for two days being ceaselessly jiggered about in that coach, the reverend taken ill from withdrawal, vomiting out the window since the driver wouldn’t stop. Henry could well sympathize. He’d been craving a drink himself.
“All right. Just the one glass. Help calm you down.”
Reverend Bean pounced on the wine and gulped it, spilling drops on his chin and shirtfront. “Thank you,” he gasped. “Truly.”
Henry watched the color seep back into his cheeks. He had never met a man so contradictory. Pious yet morally bankrupt, with a strange near-childlike innocence given all he’d seen. He refilled the wineglass and noticed the reverend’s gaze wander fearfully around the room. “Now what?” Henry asked.
Reverend Bean leaned closer. “What if he’s already here?”
“Who?”
“Him.”
Henry laughed. “And? What if he is?”
“I told you what he once threatened me with.”
“Twelve years ago, Francis. The man is now a harmless bureaucrat well into his middle years. You have nothing to fear there.”
Henry concealed the lie with a long drink. He still hadn’t shaken off his meeting with Edmund Noone, how he had somehow seen right through him; those deathly hollow eyes. Every day since the inquest was ordered he
had waited for the reprisal: an anonymous letter to Laura, some thug putting him against a wall. There’d been nothing. As if Noone was only too happy to participate. Tempting to think he had the man running scared but he doubted it. Noone didn’t seem the kind.
“You don’t know what he’s capable of,” Reverend Bean was saying. “When I saw him in that desert, when I looked into those eyes . . .”
“Calm yourself, Francis. You came to me, remember, nobody forced you to do this. If you truly felt that way you would not have spoken up in the first place, or else why are we even here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Well it’s clearly not a crisis of conscience. You are hardly a reformed man.”
Reverend Bean glanced at the wine. Henry relented, nodded, and this time Bean savored the flavor, his eyes closed. He opened them again and said, “I am dying, Mr. Wells, if you haven’t noticed. I have drunk myself to an early grave. Which means that in short order I shall be standing before God attempting to justify myself, and what on earth will I say? If I do nothing, my soul is forsaken, since by then it will be too late. So I am trying. Redemption, forgiveness, these are always selfish acts. I am no different. I’m here to save myself.”
Henry took a moment to process this. Indeed, it was obvious, now that he’d said it, how ill the man really was; perhaps Henry just hadn’t wanted to see. He cleared his throat and asked him, “And that is worth crossing Noone for, in your eyes?”
Wearily, Reverend Bean smiled. “Like I said, I am dying—what do I have to lose?”
That night Henry lay tossing in his bedsheets, impossible to get to sleep. The sheets smelled of mildew, the mattress was misshapen, the pillow lumpen, the room was both stifling and damp. Moonlight blazed through the threadbare curtains and cast long shadows on the floor, bursts of laughter and voices coming up from the bar below. He flipped over and lay stewing. No such problems for Reverend Bean—Henry could hear him snoring through the wall. He sighed and tried to settle. Think of the case . . . think of the case. Tomorrow he would meet the magistrate, ask some questions around town; he would get a shave and haircut, and buy Reverend Bean a new suit. Off-cuts only. The cheapest and closest fit. Certain expenses might be reclaimable, others not, but this was all an investment in Henry’s eyes. Any finding of impropriety against Chief Inspector Noone, any at all—which in the circumstances should be an obscenely low bar for the magistrate to clear—paved the way for a criminal prosecution, and that was when the real fun would begin. They could charge him back in Brisbane, try him in the Supreme Court, with all the pomp and ceremony, and surely it would be Henry’s case to bring. He was the one who had been out here, laid the groundwork, seen this place for himself. He knew the case and had the trust of the key witness: Reverend Bean wouldn’t confide in anyone else. And he would win, goddamnit, he would put that bastard away, the first time it had ever been done . . . and Henry’s career, his whole life, would be transformed.