Dust Off the Bones

by Paul Howarth

  “Most of them, though there are always complications now and then.”

  “Hundreds of successful patrols, then. And just to be clear, what do you mean when you use the word patrol?”

  “Riding out with my troopers in pursuit of a suspect, investigating a crime, usually following some kind of depredation having been committed by the blacks.”

  “Depredations such as . . . ?”

  Noone sighed. “Anything from unlawful assembly to attacking cattle to an outrage as heinous as that which befell the McBrides.”

  “And you were almost always successful, you just said?”

  “I was good at my job, Mr. Wells. I still am.”

  “I wonder then—and since you can’t recall the numbers exactly, you’ll forgive me for laboring the point—why I found not a single record of an Aborigine being prosecuted following an arrest by you. Not one. After so many successful patrols, the court records should be overflowing with trials and convictions based on your good work. Yet there is nothing, at least not so far as I was able to find.”

  “Perhaps you just haven’t looked hard enough.”

  “Oh, I assure you I have. As have my clerks. We have spent a great deal of time at the task. Which is why I asked the question: if these hundreds of successful patrols yielded not one single prosecution, how many arrests were actually made? You do not strike me as the kind of officer who would release a suspect without charge, having gone to the trouble of tracking him down.”

  “I was very thorough, Mr. Wells, as I have said.”

  “Quite. But can you answer the question?”

  “Which was what exactly?”

  “Why so few prosecutions, Chief Inspector?”

  Noone shifted in his chair. “Often it was more a case of deterrence than prosecution. A warning, as it were. And of dispersing assemblages as and when.”

  “Dispersing, yes. And we all know what that means.”

  “It is a common-enough word.”

  “And a common-enough euphemism among Native Police officers for the massacre of Aborigines, is it not?”

  Noone glanced uneasily at MacIntyre. “Of course not.”

  “Really? Because I have here a number of your police reports in which—”

  “Keep the questions relevant, Mr. Wells,” MacIntyre said. “We are only concerned with the case directly before us, not the Chief Inspector’s entire career.”

  Henry paused, allowed Noone to stew in discomfort for a while. He was twitching impatiently, coiling like a spring. And, despite it all, Henry was beginning to enjoy himself. He was on his own stomping ground now.

  “Very well then. Returning to the question of arrests . . .”

  “For God’s sake,” Noone said.

  “Given the lack of prosecutions—which is not my opinion, by the way, but recorded fact—I am curious to know, Chief Inspector, what other outcomes were you able to secure over your eighteen-year service that would have rendered these hundreds of patrols successful, in your own mind?”

  Noone was very still for a moment. Henry forced himself to hold his gaze.

  “Have you ever served in law enforcement, Henry?”

  “I have not.”

  “The military?”

  “Again, no.”

  “Have you ever chosen to risk your life for a purpose greater than your own?”

  “Not unless standing here counts,” Henry said, laughing nervously, prompting titters from the gallery behind.

  “Well, let me tell you something about this country: we were not given it by the grace of God, not like they’d have you believe. By rights, none of you even ought to be here. You all, in one way or another, came on the boats. The natives whose land we are squatting on wanted nothing other than for us to leave. That is why they speared your cattle. That is why they attacked your homes. That is why, when the police come calling, they would rather fight to the death than face trial. They do not accept our laws any more than they accept our presence here. Frankly, it is a miracle I am still alive, that this town even exists. The things I have endured . . . the countless things men like me have done to keep men like you safe on these shores, and yet here you stand questioning me about arrest statistics: What the hell is this, MacIntyre?”

  “It was you who insisted,” the judge blustered. “I was done!”

  Noone was making to leave the witness box. Henry needed to keep him there. Over the commotion in the gallery he shouted, “Then let’s discuss the McBride murders, the reason we are all here. Surely you can’t object to that?”

  Noone settled. The muscle at his jaw creased. He took a long nasal breath and folded his arms so tightly his jacket looked ready to tear. Henry didn’t wait for him to answer, pressing ahead before he could change his mind.

  “You said the bodies had been buried by the time you first got to the house?”

  “Yes.”

  “By the brothers, and you said John Sullivan gave use of his men?”

  “So I was told.”

  “How many men?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Enough, presumably, to help with the digging and the carrying and suchlike—would half a dozen be a reasonable estimate?”

  “The man wasn’t there, Mr. Wells,” MacIntyre protested.

  “All right. A good number of them, anyway, moving through the house, trampling all over the yard, and yet you were still able to find sufficient evidence of what had occurred and a clear set of tracks leading into the scrub?”

  “As I said, I am good at my job. A damn sight better than you.”

  “And the brothers told you they had seen this man, Joseph?”

  “Yes.”

  “Plus, how many natives was it?”

  “It is in their testimonies.”

  “You don’t remember? We could check the document now?”

  Noone sighed. “As I recall, they said about twelve.”

  “Twelve? Yet when you caught up with them, there were only four?”

  “I can’t be expected to account for what the two brothers said. Perhaps they were mistaken. Billy McBride is sitting right there—why don’t you ask him?”

  “I’m sure we will, Chief Inspector. Still, twelve down to four?”

  “It was dusk, they’d just found their family butchered, I think we can allow them a little leeway. For all I know, the other eight may have took off elsewhere.”

  “You didn’t go looking for them?”

  “We followed the tracks we had.”

  “You believed the brothers’ account though?”

  “I had no reason not to.”

  “They swore the testimonies before yourself, in fact?”

  “Time was of the essence, and the bush is hardly brimming with officials authorized to take an oath. I was the only person around.”

  “Where did you do it?”

  “At the Sullivan homestead.”

  “And did you write them, or did they?”

  “The words are theirs. I don’t recall who held the pen.”

  “You don’t recall?”

  “No. I do not.” Speaking through clenched teeth.

  “And then, on the basis of this trampled scene and the testimony of two young boys, you went out after the suspects, with four civilians in tow?”

  “As I have already explained.”

  “There was a fight, all four natives were killed, including Joseph?”

  “I just said so.”

  “In the ranges?”

  “If you intend repeating back to me everything I have already said . . .”

  “You believe the bodies might still be out there?”

  “This is ridiculous. You’re wasting my time.”

  “Pull your head in with your questions, Mr. Wells, or you can sit back down.”

  Henry turned on Magistrate MacIntyre: “Have you conducted a search for these bodies yourself, sir?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Have you been to the ranges to look for them?”

&n
bsp; “Well, I mean, there are others who’ve been out there and—”

  “On your behalf, though? Specifically conducting a search?”

  “Not exactly, but I’ve spoken to those who—”

  “So, no proper search has ever been conducted in order to verify the Chief Inspector’s account?”

  “What’s the use?” MacIntyre said, exasperated. “There’d be nothing left!”

  “No search conducted. And do you recall, Chief Inspector, where exactly in the ranges this gunfight occurred?”

  “I do not. It was dusk, and the ranges are a very big place.”

  “Indeed they are. Indeed they are. Now, as you are aware, Reverend Bean claims he encountered you half a day’s ride west of there.”

  Noone looked about comically. “Did he? When? I never heard him.”

  “It’s in his testimony.”

  “Unsworn testimony. Which I have not seen.”

  “Sworn before me personally. If you were good enough for the McBride brothers, surely I will suffice for Reverend Bean?”

  “I wouldn’t be so certain of that.”

  “Are you saying, then, that you have no recollection of any meeting?”

  “I am.”

  “Never met the man in your life?”

  “Almost everyone I have met in my life is forgettable, Mr. Wells, including your good self. So I cannot be certain that your reverend has not accosted me on some street corner or pressed his hand into mine—if your intention is to scupper me with clever wordplay I am afraid I’ll have to disappoint. But what I can confirm absolutely is that I did not meet Reverend Bean west of the ranges because I have never been there. We returned to Broken Ridge immediately, as I have said.”

  “We being”—Henry made a point of checking his notes—“yourself, your four troopers, John Sullivan, Raymond Locke, Billy and Tommy McBride. Nine in total, isn’t that what you said?”

  “Your mathematics are improving, Henry.”

  “Thank you. And where are your troopers now, Mr. Noone?”

  “Retired, or killed in service. The job was equally dangerous for them.”

  “Liar!”

  Henry stalled. All heads turned. The shout had come from the gallery, from a man standing near the back wall. The crowd parted, and Billy, twisting in his seat, let out a low, pained groan. The hair was thinning, the beard long, there were rings like bulging saddlebags under the eyes, but he recognized Drew Bennett immediately. Billy rose to his feet as Drew yelled, “I know what you done to ’em, you bastard! You killed ’em! And burned down my bloody barn!”

  He was drunk. Jabbing a trembling finger, badly slurring his words. People around him began backing away until he was standing there all alone.

  “Drew,” Billy called. “Don’t do this.”

  Squinting, his finger wavering as if divining who had spoken, he finally settled on Billy and said, “You ain’t no different, Billy. You’re just as bad as him.”

  “Guard!” MacIntyre began yelling. “Guard!”

  “Ought we not to hear what the man has to say?” Henry asked.

  “He’s a drunk and a fool, anyone can see that—guard!” Finally Donnaghy managed to push through from the lobby. “Get him out of here!”

  Donnaghy wrestled Drew Bennett out of the courtroom, through the crowd, and outside. Slowly the gallery settled. Billy retook his seat. Katherine was staring at him. Billy had been with Noone when he’d gone to Drew Bennett’s place. Just tracking down a missing trooper, he had said. Supposedly they had found him, then left. Nothing about any killing, or burning the Bennetts’ barn.

  “Sir, I really think we should have heard that man.”

  “One interloper is bad enough, Mr. Wells. This is a courtroom, not a bloody town hall. Aren’t you done yet? You don’t seem to be getting anywhere and frankly I’m growing tired of hearing your voice.”

  “I’ll press on, if I may.” Henry gathered himself, tried to remember where he was going with this. “So, Chief Inspector, your troopers are at least unaccounted for—let us put it that way. And what of the others in the expedition: John Sullivan, Raymond Locke, Tommy McBride?”

  “Am I nursemaid to all these men now?”

  “It’s not a difficult question. You have already explained how, shortly after the expedition, John Sullivan was killed by his headman, Raymond Locke. And then I believe you killed Locke yourself, or do I have that wrong?”

  “No, that is correct.”

  “Care to explain?”

  “The man resisted arrest. I had no choice.”

  “Seems a little convenient.”

  “Not for him.”

  “A lot of people die when you try to arrest them, don’t they, Chief Inspector?”

  “A lot of people choose to resist.”

  “And Tommy McBride, the younger brother, where is he?”

  “The last I heard, he was a fugitive from the law, heading for New South Wales. That was about seven years ago. His brother is more likely to know.”

  “My point is, the only people still around with knowledge of these events are yourself and Mr. Billy McBride.”

  Wearily Noone said, “Hence the reason we are both here. Unlike some.”

  “The full details of what happened weren’t released to the public, were they?”

  “I wouldn’t have thought so.”

  “Particularly the fact you took civilians with you, being contrary to police regulations—I notice you didn’t mention it in your report.”

  “No, Mr. Wells, I did not.”

  “I wonder then, how it’s possible that Reverend Bean in his written testimony knew all of these things exactly as you have described them. I have it here in front of me: There were nine of them, he says. Noone plus four troopers, the McBride boys and two other white men—I didn’t ever learn their names. How could he possibly have known that, Chief Inspector, if he never met you out there?”

  Absolute silence in the courtroom. Noone’s eyes roved across the gallery then back again, boring into Henry, his chest heaving, struggling to hold himself in check.

  “I have no idea,” Noone said finally. “And neither do you.”

  “But I do know, because he told me.”

  Noone threw up his hands. “The man isn’t even here.”

  “The account is inadmissible,” MacIntyre added. “I’ve already ruled on that.”

  Henry ignored him, plowed ahead, reading: “They had a young native girl with them, taken captive; she rode on the younger brother’s horse.”

  He looked up at Noone expectantly. “Is that a question?” Noone asked.

  “You don’t have anything to say about it?”

  “No.”

  “Is it true?”

  “All lies. The same as everything else.”

  “On the contrary, Chief Inspector, I put it to you that you did in fact meet with Reverend Bean west of the ranges, and that you warned him most severely against ever speaking out. The poor man is still petrified to this day, which I daresay is why he’s not here. Did you not threaten to remove his eyes and ears and cut out his tongue and send him wandering naked through the desert?”

  “I am not even going to dignify that question with a response.”

  “So you don’t deny it?”

  MacIntyre said, “Mr. Wells, that’s enough.”

  “Of course I bloody deny it!”

  “After meeting him you rode to the Kurrong camp, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Where you waited until the next morning, at dawn.”

  “No.”

  “Then you descended into that crater and slaughtered them: men, women and children, hundreds put to the sword.”

  “This is outrageous!”

  “Before piling up the bodies and burning them, reducing an entire tribe of people to a mound of ash, and concealing your crime for all these years?”

  Noone turned to MacIntyre. “You’ll allow this horseshit in your courtroom?”

  “You’d best a
nswer the question, Edmund. There are reporters here.”

  Squirming, Noone said, “No, we did not. It is an affront to even suggest it.”

  “Then where are the Kurrong now?” Henry asked him, looking about. “What happened to your warmongering horde? Hundreds of them, you just told us, so where are they? Where did they all go?”

  “They are an . . . an itinerant people.”

  “Who just happened to disappear?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “But you do know, don’t you, Chief Inspector?”

  “No, I . . .”

  “You know, because you killed them.”

  “I did not. I . . .”

  “You killed them and burned their bodies and left them there to rot.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You and your Native Police, your so-called dispersal campaigns—how many massacres have you overseen, Chief Inspector? How many people have been butchered at your command?”

  “Enough!” Noone yelled, slamming his hand against the wooden witness box as loud as a gunshot. “I do not need to sit here and listen to this!”

  He rose from his seat as Magistrate MacIntyre bellowed, “Mr. Wells, I will not have the Chief Inspector spoken to in that manner in my courtroom.”

  “I only seek the truth, sir. A truth everyone here already knows. The whole colony is aware of what has happened on the frontier and has been happening for a hundred years. But nobody will speak of it. We close our eyes and pretend it never happened; well, the time has come to stop.”

  Noone fastened the button on his suit jacket but remained standing, recovered now, and huge in the little wooden box. He leaned forward and gripped the edges with his hands, knuckles like thick white burrs. He resembled a preacher in the pulpit, glaring with naked fury at Henry Wells. The crowd, cowed into silence, hung on Noone’s next word. He swept a hand across his audience and summoned a voice that filled the room.

  “Everybody knows it, do they? The whole colony knows the truth? Then where is your evidence, Henry? Where are your witnesses, where are the bodies, the piles and piles of the dead? Did you ride beyond the ranges to find them? Did you comb the ashes of this bonfire I’m supposed to have lit? No, I didn’t think so, because the evidence does not exist. And neither are you the kind of man to get his hands dirty, are you, Henry Wells? Or at least, not in that sense of the word. No, you’d rather come in here with your theories and false testimony and besmirch me in front of this crowd. Well, I will not stand for it, and neither will they. The people of this town won’t be fooled by some grubby little sodomite who is only looking to advance his own career. Have you already imagined the headlines? Was it you who invited the press? The fact is, you know nothing of policing, or of the colonies—you have not earned the right to question me. You are a parasite, men like you, feeding off this country we’ve created while stabbing her in the back at the same time. This man would see you ruined, ladies and gentlemen. These city dwellers telling you how and where you should live—I don’t see them conducting this kind of inquisition in their own backyards. Out there on the coast they live like barbarians, as indeed does Henry Wells: without morals, without backbone, without God. What do they care about Bewley, about your struggles, about what it takes to survive out here? You are fodder to their ambition, a means to advance their agenda and little more. Mark my words, if they could, they would raze this town and return this entire district to the blacks, then retreat to their mansions and over cigars and fine brandy congratulate themselves on a job well done. They would comb through your history, as they are attempting today with mine, and throw you in the cells for ever having protected your families, your livelihoods, your town. This man buggers his way through Brisbane one back alley at a time, yet dares to come here and pour shame on you all, with that self-same condescension and hypocrisy you have always received from the coast.” He pointed directly at Henry Wells. “Ladies and gentlemen, here is the long reach of government. Here is Brisbane’s favorite son. Here is the authority of the old motherland that once shipped out your grandfathers and delivered them to these shores in chains, shackles you have been fighting to be free of all your lives. This man is an enemy of Australia! Do not let his conspiracy stand!”