‘Tears now?’ said Sarah. ‘Nice try. More tricks up your sleeve than Drake.’ She folded her arms across her chest. ‘You made a complete fool out of me, Matt.’ Her hand trembled. ‘I didn’t deserve that.’
‘No,’ said Matt. ‘You didn’t.’
Sarah inclined her head. ‘Thank you for that at least. Now, where are the tigers?’
‘You do know that if their location gets out, every idiot under the sun will go after them. Plenty would shoot them on sight.’
‘True – that’s why they must be captured. The animals are too valuable to be left to fend for themselves.’
‘Valuable to who exactly? Zoos? Laboratories? Then forgive me if I can’t see captivity being any great improvement in their lifestyle. And what about the cloning experiments that go wrong? There’s a fair serve of suffering in that. And if you succeed, what happens when we don’t only have ten, or twenty. What happens when we have hundreds?’
‘We’ll stock international zoos,’ said Sarah. ‘We could reintroduce them to the wild. You could have some here at Binburra.’
A pulse started in his neck. ‘And if their numbers built up in the wild? What would happen if tigers started taking sheep?’
‘They could be culled.’
‘Are you kidding me?’ It was like talking to a small child. ‘That’s what drove them to the brink in the first place.’ He worked his jaw back and forth to relieve a painful cramp. ‘You say humans will decide how many tigers there should be, and where they should live or die. You say it’s fine to resurrect a species solely to be used as zoo exhibits or for experiments or to be killed down the track when it suits. That’s hardly in the thylacines’ best interests, and it’s a questionable moral position to boot.’
‘We’ve had this argument before.’ Sarah’s voice was low.
‘Then we’re bloody well going to have it again. Why can’t we let nature be? Not conservation, but preservation. Not management, but protection. Please, Sarah. Please don’t do this.’
* * *
Penny couldn’t believe it. Sarah’s car parked right next to Matt’s. She grabbed a torch from the glove box and checked to make sure, but there was no mistake. Same model, same colour. Penny shone the torch in the window. A UTAS key ring dangled from the ignition. The beam caught something else, a dark smear on the bumper. Blood and fur. Sarah had killed the pademelon. It had been dead for hours, which meant Sarah had been here for hours. All that time. During appetisers, during dinner, during Hellgrun’s victory speech. All that time, while Penny agonised over how to tell Matt of her pregnancy, Sarah had been at Binburra. Waiting. Waiting for another woman’s husband, for her husband.
Penny’s breath came shallow and strained. Her body hurt. Thank heavens she hadn’t mentioned the baby. Would Matt have been pleased, or only pretended. A masochistic urge sent her sneaking up to the house. Her home, where she’d lived for twelve years, where she’d known so much happiness. It looked almost sinister tonight, crouched halfway up the hill. Some poor cursed creature, made ugly by a witch.
The verandah radio was on, sounding loud in the stillness, playing some silly love song. Penny hid in the shadows and held onto her breath, wanting proof. Something that meant there’d be no misgivings, no doubt about the fullness, the completeness, of Matt’s betrayal. For once, Penny approved of the full-length glass that sucked in summer’s heat and winter’s cold. Of the tattered, threadbare curtains, their bottom edges ripped ragged by the teeth and claws of quolls and devils. They afforded no privacy to those inside, so long as the lights were on.
Closer and closer she crept, on tiptoes to her bedroom window, and knelt beneath the waratah Matt had planted for her birthday. Penny stared at the black glass. Maybe she was wrong. But even as this faint, hopeful thought dawned, she knew that way danger lay. There was no defence against an unacknowledged truth. Safety lay in facing it. So Penny stayed moth-quiet, watching in the night for her worst fear to reveal itself.
* * *
Sarah was an immoveable object. Their discussion was getting nowhere. Frustration boiled over, causing him to slam the table with his fist, startling her. Get a grip. Frightening Sarah wouldn’t help.
He withdrew to the dark bedroom and switched on the lamp. Light flooded from the window through the unkempt bush garden beyond. He sat on the bed and stared at the night. Something was out there, a moving shadow. Or maybe not. He stood up, stood close to the glass for a better look.
Sarah knocked on the door and entered without an invitation. Matt sat back down and she sat beside him, resting a hand on his knee. ‘My visits to your bed are always so disappointing.’
Matt laughed a hollow laugh. Sarah smoothed the candlewick coverlet then kissed him. He was too surprised to resist. ‘That’s for what might have been,’ she said, stroking his cheek. ‘I wanted to kill you when you stood me up tonight.’ She looked so grim he didn’t doubt it. ‘But now? Now I’m just sad. It was going to be you and me and the discovery of a lifetime. It was going to be perfect.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Matt, and he was. He owed Sarah, and he understood her. She’d played the game as hard as he had. She believed she was right, just as he did, and in the end she’d outsmarted him. If it had mattered less to either of them, they’d be shaking hands.
‘Try to see the big picture,’ she said. ‘You keep devils here in cages.’
‘That’s different,’ he said. ‘There’s still a viable wild population out there. Devils who know how to be devils. There’s more to an animal than its DNA, Sarah. Remove those last precious apex predators from the wild and the species will be culturally extinct, even if you do have a few bewildered exiles running around in zoos.’
‘Culturally extinct?’ Sarah was half-smiling. ‘Now you’re having me on.’
‘Do your research. Read Laland and Janik. Read Brower. He says wild species are 2 percent flesh and bone and 98 percent place. Like that orchid I showed you, they exist in the most important way, only in relationship to their habitat. How do you suppose those tigers have survived all this time? I’ll tell you how. Through their local knowledge, their tried and tested hunting techniques, their intergenerational learning. Through vocalisations passed down and a thousand things that aren’t innate – a rich social life that we can’t even guess at.’
‘Even if I accept that thylacine culture will die out, does it matter? Is it really that important?’
Matt ran a hand through his hair. ‘How long have humans lived in Tasmania? Not Europeans – human beings.’ Sarah shook her head. ‘Fifty thousand years,’ said Matt. ‘And thylacines? Twenty million years. Twenty million years of thylacine culture on this island, and some blow-in Yank thinks she has the right to deem it unimportant.’
Sarah stared at him. For the first time that night, she had no counterargument ready. When she finally spoke, there was a quiver in her voice. ‘I need a drink.’
* * *
Penny blinked as the bedroom light came on, turning the window into a cinema screen. If only this was a movie. There, Matt moving towards the bed, sitting down. He stared straight at her. Stood up, moved closer. He must have seen her, must know she was hiding out here in the gloom. Penny tensed, wanting to rush inside, waiting for a gesture, a sign. But Matt turned away. She was wrong. He hadn’t seen her, hadn’t felt her presence at all.
Sarah suddenly appeared in the room, a distortion of that familiar space. She crossed over to Matt. He sat down. She sat close beside him. Close enough to smell his aftershave, to hear him breathe. Any closer and Sarah would feel the beat of his heart. Then, in Penny’s own bedroom, on her own bed, Sarah laid a hand on Matt’s knee and kissed him. Penny lurched as a jolt of pain shot through her. How far would Matt go to neutralise Sarah? How far had he already gone?
Penny had seen enough. She fled back down the path. Her fingers fumbled at the gears, forgetting the handbrake, stalling twice before coaxing the car to life. She flew down the drive, wincing at the sickening sound of scraping metal as
she misjudged Binburra’s gatepost.
What she wanted was her uncle. Somebody who loved her for sure, for no reason. Loved her just because. That’s what she needed now, unfailing love. Penny shivered in the warm night and eased her foot from the accelerator. Her unborn baby required unfailing love, too, from her. She could not crash on this lonely road with nobody to notice or come looking. Her unborn baby required to live.
* * *
Ray and Charlie were still in the backyard when she arrived. She could hear her uncle’s raised voice, holding forth on some subject or other. Charlie would be sitting on a picnic chair, drunk as a skunk, nodding agreement no matter what Ray said. An unfailing friendship, that one. Penny felt a pang of envy as she burst onto the porch.
Ray looked up. ‘What’s the matter, love?’
He brought her a chair, and she confessed everything in a gushing stream of consciousness, as dark as the Charon itself. It was safe to cry, here with Ray, here with Charlie. Safe to vent her heartbreak. She told them of Theo and Sarah and her suspicions about Matt. When she got to the bit about the baby, Ray stood up.
‘How far along, love? You should have told me.’ He lit a cigarette and paced up and down the weedy strip of grass.
‘I haven’t even told Matt. I was going to tell him tonight, but she’s there. Sarah’s there at Binburra,’ said Penny. ‘I saw her and Matt together in the bedroom.’
Ray stopped pacing. He muttered something, but she couldn’t catch his words in that strange, fierce growl of a voice. It hadn’t struck her at first, but she saw it now. He was too restless, too alert. His eyes, reflected in the porch light, were wild and intense – not their usual rheumy self. His posture was stiff and erect. It was as if he was on the edge of something. The muttering increased, aimed not at her or Charlie. Aimed at the night. The oddness of his behaviour cut through Penny’s misery and she tried to pull herself together.
Thankfully there was nothing strange about Charlie. He sat in the plastic picnic chair, murmuring sympathy. ‘That’s a real rough deal, love. You deserve better. I’d like to tan his hide. A tiger, eh? Didn’t I always say there was tigers?’
The whisky bottle was almost empty. Charlie would sleep it off on the couch and never remember a thing in the morning. That was the way of these things.
But something was wrong with her uncle. She’d expected, she’d needed, consoling words and a soft place to fall. Instead, he seemed to be working himself into a private fury. Penny took his arm and he shoved her aside. She steadied herself on a chair, almost falling. Ray stared at her, as if surprised by what he’d done, then he strode off into the house.
Penny watched him go. Everything she held dear was deserting her. No, that wasn’t true. She still had the baby, so hang the rest of them. She ran inside and lay face down on her bed, dry-eyed, all cried out. There were noises in the hall, raised voices. Then Charlie at the door, calling, knocking, calling again.
‘He keeps saying as he’s going to sort them two out. I think you’d better come, Pen. He ain’t fit to drive.’
‘Go away.’
Charlie knocked harder. ‘You should come, Pen. He’s taken my ute.’ A motor revved up out front. Penny dragged her weary body from the bed and opened the door.
‘I don’t care, Charlie,’ she said. ‘I just don’t care.’
‘He went and got my rifle from the back and put it beside him before he left. I tried to stop him.’
Penny hadn’t really been listening. ‘Say that again, Charlie.’
‘I said he’s got my rifle. Worked up something terrible, he was. Reckon it must have been them new pills.’
‘What pills?’ Penny struggled to recall any detail of the night before her world caved in. But when Charlie handed her the box, she remembered – sleeping pills or something. She turned it over. No chemist label. ‘Where did he get these, Charlie?’
Charlie fidgeted, seeming suddenly sober.
‘Come on, Charlie.’
‘From a bloke at the pub this arvo. Ray said the pills he got from Pete weren’t working no more.’
Penny opened the box ‒ three caplets were missing. She looked for the medical information leaflet. There, neatly folded and unread. That was something. It meant the pills weren’t from some backyard laboratory. At least they’d know what they were dealing with.
Penny flattened out the leaflet. Active ingredient Zolpidem tartrate. Standard adult dose of RestRite is one 10 mg tablet. Ray had taken three. For those over sixty-five years of age the dose is half a tablet – 5 mg. Ray would be sixty-five next month. He could be on six times the proper dose. Do not take RestRite if you have been drinking alcohol. It may increase side effects. No surprise there. She read on through the range of reactions. Dizziness. Drowsiness. Why hadn’t she tried to stop him leaving? Less common adverse effects include psychiatric and paradoxical reactions. Oh no. Confusion. Agitation. Hallucinations. Other forms of unwanted behaviour including rage reactions. Penny went into the lounge room. A fist-sized hole that wasn’t there before gaped in the plaster by the door. Her mouth went dry.
‘Charlie. Did he say why he wanted the rifle?’
‘To kill them. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Matt and that other sheila. Ray said he was going to kill them both.’
An icy shiver ran through her. She fumbled in her bag for her mobile and rang Matt. His phone was turned off. The message she left was so long it dropped out just at the important part. Penny tried again, sticking to the essentials this time. Matt. Get out of there. Ray’s on his way with a rifle. He wants to kill you. It sounded ridiculous. She steeled herself and rang Sarah. The phone rang and rang and went to message bank. Penny hung on until after the beep, then couldn’t bring herself to speak.
She dialled the Hills End police station and got Sergeant Byrne’s voice on a recorded message. Station unattended. For emergencies, ring Campbellfield. Campbellfield was an hour away. Matt might not have that long. Penny made the call in any case, sounding like somebody else on the phone, telling her absurd tale. Charlie stood by, wringing his hat in his wrinkled hands. He’d better come too. Ray might listen to Charlie. Penny urged him out of the door.
‘What about Matt’s old man?’ said Charlie. ‘Lives along Binburra Road, doesn’t he? He’d have a fair head start on us.’
Thank goodness for Charlie. Penny gave him a swift kiss and made the call. Fraser didn’t answer his mobile. Try the house phone. It rang and rang. At last McGregor picked up and she gave him a quick run-down. The story sounded outlandish, even to her.
McGregor interrupted halfway through her spiel. ‘I’ll fetch Mr Abbott.’
It took an eternity for Fraser’s voice to sound on the end of the line. Penny started all over again. There was a fine distinction between rapid speech and garbled speech. She prayed she had the balance right.
Chapter 39
Matt poured them both a glass of Scotch.
‘I could be prepared to negotiate,’ said Sarah, ‘if you tell me where the other thylacines are.’
Negotiate? He pulled a kitchen chair away from the table, spun it around, straddled it and rested his arms on its bentwood back. So this was no lay down misère, after all. What was he ready to gamble? His reputation? Certainly. His job? Yes. His integrity? She might be surprised at how much he was prepared to forfeit.
‘I’ll bet Penny could tell me where those thylacines are,’ said Sarah. ‘How about I ask her?’
‘Be my guest,’ said Matt, like a man with nothing to lose.
‘Well, if you won’t give me the others, will you at least give me Theo?’ There was a desperate edge to her voice.
‘And what do I get?’
Sarah’s clever eyes studied him as he threw back his drink. Penny was waiting back at Canterbury Downs. What would she be thinking, with him disappearing like that? He took his phone from his pocket.
‘Don’t,’ said Sarah.
Matt played with it for a moment, then put it down.
�
�Keeping Theo in a domestic freezer is no good,’ she said. ‘He’ll deteriorate.’
Matt shrugged. ‘It hardly matters. I’ll bury him soon with a little eulogy.’
Sarah paled. ‘Give him to me and I’ll guarantee your anonymity.’ The words came out in a rush. ‘You get to protect your job and the living thylacines. I get more than a piece of ear.’
Matt weighed up his options. That might be a compromise he could live with. If he trusted her, which he didn’t. Yet perhaps he’d have to take that risk. For Sarah, one thylacine in the hand was bound to be worth more than a few lost in the bush. Her natural habitat was the laboratory, not the field or zoo, and Sarah’s research project held biological samples from all over the state. If she kept her mouth shut, there’d be no reason for anyone to suspect that Theo came from Binburra.
He reached out his arm. ‘It’s a deal.’
Sarah heaved a great sigh and shook his hand. She looked just like he felt, brimming with mistrust and doubt. Neither of them had exactly been straight shooters.
The radio still played on the verandah. Matt went outside and turned it off. Had the night changed? Had the music masked the sound of the wind whipping up, its thrum through the trees? No, the ficofolia flowers still hung like still life paintings beyond the railing. It wasn’t the wind at all. It was a distant car, down on Binburra Road. Was Penny coming? Noise carried far in the mountains. The car could be ten minutes away, maybe more. Though Matt would tell Penny everything when she arrived, it would be better if she didn’t find Sarah there.
The Memory Tree Page 25