Emerald Springs

by Fleur McDonald

  ‘Oh yeah! I loved swimming there, although—’ Chrissie leaned closer ‘—I have to say, I was always scared something would grab my legs from really deep down. I’d swim around with my knees up around my chest, and that took some doing!’

  Amelia laughed. She was surprised at how good it felt, the mirth bubbling up from inside, even though her ribs still gave her a spasm of pain. ‘Look, Chrissie,’ she said, ‘I want to move on from what happened, and I reckon to me that means remembering. Not just so I can report back to Dave—I need to do it for myself.’

  ‘So just keep walking and don’t think,’ prompted Chrissie. ‘Say the first thing that comes into your mind. How did you get out of the ute?’

  Amelia opened her mouth to say she didn’t know, but a word came out: ‘Dragged.’

  Chrissie didn’t change pace. She tugged a little on Amelia’s arm to keep her walking. ‘Dragged,’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes. I remember hands on me and . . .’ Amelia stopped, struggling with what she had to say.

  Chrissie stayed quiet, her gait steady, while Amelia looked around her home. Everything was just as it had been before the rodeo. It was peaceful and quiet. The shearing shed still had a piece of tin that banged every time the wind blew, and the chook-pen gate had flapped open as it always did when there was a northerly wind. She loved this place and knew it by heart. It hadn’t changed in those few minutes of the robbery, but she had.

  Instead of the contentment she usually experienced at Granite Ridge, she felt fear. Dark places—like the shadowed insides of the sheds—were making her anxious. She realised that in her head was the idea that someone was lurking there, watching her, waiting for the moment to strike. She wondered if she could ever make it stop.

  Holding tight to Chrissie’s arm, she raced through what she had to say, the images filling her mind. ‘They dragged me out, hit me. There was a torch, or a spotlight—something shining in my eyes.’ She paused and licked her lips. ‘A man tied my hands. Felt like he’d set me on fire—must’ve been the taser. Then he kicked me.’ Amelia stopped, looking into Chrissie’s wide, worried eyes. ‘I know there’s more—I know I heard them talking—but I just can’t remember what they said.’

  Chapter 19

  Dave grabbed hold of Kim’s hand as she put his late lunch on the table in front of him and turned to go back into the kitchen. She hadn’t smiled at him once today.

  ‘Sit with me a little while,’ he said. ‘There’s no one else but me here.’

  Kim sank into the chair opposite. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Got a question for you,’ Dave said, as he attacked his steak.

  ‘I’ll answer it, if it’s not the line of questioning you took with Milly this morning.’ She gave him a stare that left him in no doubt she knew what he’d been up to.

  ‘I’m doing my job, Kim,’ he said softly.

  ‘I know.’ There was a defiant tone to her voice. ‘Which is why I didn’t mention it. Doesn’t mean I’m happy about it.’ She crossed her arms.

  The only sound now was the buzzing of the flycatcher. Dave put down his knife and fork, and gazed at Kim. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘What for? Can’t help having to do your job. I know you’re barking up the wrong tree if you really think Milly had something to do with it, but I won’t interfere until I need to. You’ll find who really did this, Dave, because you’re tenacious. You won’t look at Milly for long.’ Kim sounded so confident, and Dave hoped he never had to break her heart with any terrible news about her niece.

  ‘Okay, look . . . what can you tell me about Paul?’

  Kim leaned back and eyed him. ‘Paul. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Anything and everything. No matter how small.’

  Kim started at the beginning. She told him how Old Brian Barnes had pissed all his money up against the wall. How he’d driven all his kids, except Paul, away—and how, when he’d died, the bank had wanted to hold a sale.

  ‘But Paul did everything in his power to stop that. He sold stock to cover the interest payments that were behind, and he sold some machinery too. I think it was called a dispersal sale, not a clearing sale, because he didn’t want to get rid of everything, you see? He got enough money together to put a crop in, and the first harvest was a good one. He’s been clawing his way back since, but it’s been hard yakka.’ Kim frowned. ‘So, you suspect him, don’t you? It’s him you’re mainly interested in, not Milly.’

  Dave gave a sad smile. ‘I can’t say anything officially, and you didn’t hear anything from me. However, I can say—’ he held up a finger ‘—if it is Paul, she may be the cause.’

  Kim stared at him. ‘Right. Yeah, okay, I can understand that, but . . . look, there’s someone else you might want to think about. This idiot on the rodeo committee, Jim Green. He’s been giving Milly a hard time since day one.’

  It resonated with Dave that Paul had held a dispersal sale and put a crop in, but he couldn’t put his finger on why. After lunch, he went back to his motel room and wrote up two names on the whiteboard he’d set up: Paul Barnes and Jim Green. And just for good measure he wrote Grant Hink. There was a motive for that man, without a doubt: whether he was capable of assault and robbery was another question.

  Standing back, he looked over all the information he’d written down. On the top left-hand side was what had been stolen. Below, every fact they had on the crimes. In the middle was a map of the area. He’d marked in black where the two towns were, while in red he’d marked where the crimes had taken place. Then he’d drawn a line linking all of them together. He stared at the radius.

  ‘Okay, I need to find the link here,’ he muttered. ‘There’s nothing I can see on the map that links everything together. Not yet, anyway.’ He stuck the texta in his mouth and tapped it against his teeth as he thought.

  His eyes were drawn to the items that had been taken: Diesel, Chemical, GPS guidance system, Ute.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Slowly the hand holding the texta went down to his side. ‘There it is. The link. What a bloody idiot I am.’

  He ripped the lid off the texta and connected the four items with a line. Next to it he wrote: Cropping.

  ‘That’s what it is. All these things are related to cropping.’ It hadn’t occurred to him until now, but it was pretty difficult to crop these days without a GPS system. It cut down the waste on chemical and seed, making the task much more efficient. ‘And I bet they took the ute mainly because the chemical was on the back and it was quicker and easier to drive off with it.’ He spun around to the motel table, which was serving as his desk. Flicking through his notes, he found his interviews with Amelia and read back through them.

  ‘So,’ he said, ‘we have a boyfriend who is skint. It’s common knowledge he’s sold things to get himself out of debt. Everything that’s been stolen has to do with cropping. Is Paul planning to put in more crop?’ He made a note on his pad to ask.

  ‘We have a girlfriend who has access to the money from the rodeo and could pass on information about the transfer. But she got hurt.’ He paced the room. ‘Do I assume the boyfriend could be merciless and beat Amelia up? Maybe he even coerced her into helping him. Or could he have paid someone else to do it? Did it get out of hand somehow? Maybe whoever did it went too far and Amelia wasn’t supposed to get hurt.’ Dave stood still and thought a bit more.

  Now he had more questions than answers, but that was okay. He’d get to the bottom of it. Today he’d talk to Jim and then have the long chat with Paul that he’d been planning.

  He snatched up his car keys and his satchel before carefully making sure the curtains were drawn, so no one could see in. That had been the biggest issue he’d had with the girls who worked in the motel. They were all gossips and desperate to have some idea of what was going on. He watched them when they came in to make the bed, doing their best to peer at the whiteboard. He’d had to cover it up with a blanket and lay all his notes face down on the table.

  As much as he loved small towns
and communities that looked out for one another, sometimes it was hard to keep secrets.

  Dave pulled up at Barker freight depot and looked around. There were forklifts piling freight onto the back of three trucks. Through an office window he could see a man on the phone gesturing as if angry. Dave couldn’t see Jim, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t there. Depots were like rabbit warrens, with sheds and trucks everywhere.

  ‘G’day, can I help you?’ called a voice to his left.

  Dave turned and saw a tattooed truckie with a big moustache and a blue singlet stretched over his ample belly. ‘Yeah, I’m looking for Jim Green?’

  ‘He’ll be over in the lunch room. It’s his break. Him and Kev’s.’

  ‘Kev?’ Dave asked.

  ‘Yeah, Kev Hubble. Can you shift your car, mate? Over towards that way.’ The man pointed to a car park that Dave hadn’t seen.

  ‘Yeah, mate, sure. Sorry.’

  He’d briefly interviewed Kev and Jim on the day before, along with all the committee members, but hadn’t realised they worked together. They were clearly thick as thieves socially, but employment hadn’t come up. Interesting fact, he thought.

  He shifted the car and went in search of Jim and Kev. At the door of the gloomy shed-cum-lunch-room that smelt stuffy and enclosed, he heard voices.

  ‘Get out of the bloody way, ya stupid mongrel.’

  Dave took a step into the shed in time to see Jim kick out at a skinny yellow dog, who was slinking away into the darkness of the closest corner. Jim’s foot didn’t connect but there was a high-pitched yelp that told Dave the action had happened more than once.

  ‘Dunno why the boss lets that mutt stay here, sneakin’ around, eating scraps, the way it does. Full of fleas and worms.’

  ‘I dunno why you’ve such a bloody bee in yer bonnet about the poor thing,’ Kev muttered. ‘It’s just looking for a home.’

  Knowing he hadn’t been noticed yet, Dave stopped to see what Jim would do next. He wondered if Jim had a tendency towards violence.

  ‘Ha!’ the man snorted. ‘I’d kick the bugger again if I could reach it, but I’m knackered after me run yesterday, so I’m not getting off me fat arse.’ He sat down at a rickety old laminated table and plonked his dusty boots up on it, then took a swig of coffee from a dirty white cup.

  Dave cleared his throat and walked further into the light, nodding at the men. ‘Jim, Kev.’ He grabbed a chair, turned it around and sat down straddling it.

  ‘G’day,’ said Jim, looking at him warily.

  ‘How you goin’, Dave?’ Kev asked, amiable enough.

  ‘All fine in my neck of the woods. How about with you?’

  ‘No use in complaining,’ Kev quipped. ‘No bastard listens anyhow.’

  Reading body language was so important in Dave’s line of work and he was getting the impression that Jim really wasn’t that happy to see him. Kev, on the other hand, was relaxed and comfortable.

  ‘Just needed to ask a few more questions about the night of the rodeo.’

  ‘Fire away,’ Jim said, putting his cup down and taking his feet off the table.

  ‘Did you think Amelia was going to do a good job as treasurer?’ Dave asked as he got out his notepad.

  ‘You recording this?’ Jim asked suddenly.

  Dave looked up at him. ‘Uh, no, but I need to take notes so I don’t forget what you said. You got a problem with that?’

  ‘Nah, nah.’ He waved his hands about. ‘So get on with ’em, then.’

  Dave repeated his first question.

  ‘I was opposed to her getting that job,’ Jim said in a loud voice.

  ‘I gotta admit I didn’t like the idea much either,’ Kev added.

  ‘Why was that?’ Dave raised his eyebrows and made his tone sound surprised. Of course, he already knew these details from the interviews he’d conducted on Monday, but he needed to make sure the stories matched up.

  ‘I didn’t think Milly had the capability. You gotta work up to these types of jobs.’ Jim leaned forward as he spoke. ‘You can’t be involved with any type of group and not earn yer stripes. Start as a lackey and work up from there. Coupla years runnin’ around, doin’ everyone’s bidding, then take on a job.’

  ‘Her and that fancy degree she’s got,’ Kev said in a snide tone.

  Dave’s eyes slid across to him. He made a gesture so that Kev would continue talking, but the man just shrugged as Jim took up the commentary again.

  ‘I didn’t like the way she sidled in here, pretended her past didn’t play a part in the way we all thought about her. She twisted Gus and the others around her little finger, pretending she was changed.’ Jim screwed up his mouth and shook his head. ‘Let me tell you, a leopard don’t change its spots. She’s a silly little woman, coming in wanting to upset the pecking order that all of us had already worked out.’

  ‘You don’t like her, then?’

  ‘It’s not that we don’t like her,’ Kev broke in. ‘Just that we thought she’d cause trouble. Jim ’n’ me didn’t want that. We’ve worked hard on the rodeo. Didn’t want to see it go down the gurgler ’cause of some inexperienced girl.’

  ‘Couldn’t put it better meself,’ Jim said emphatically.

  Dave nodded his understanding and jotted down a few notes. ‘So did you make her life difficult at all?’

  The two men stared at him, then their eyes shifted away to glance at each other.

  ‘Well, I don’t reckon . . .’ Kev started to answer.

  ‘Nah, we didn’t,’ Jim interrupted. ‘We told her a few facts about what would happen if she stuffed things up. That wasn’t making her life difficult. Just putting it out there plain and simple.’

  Dave suppressed a sigh of irritation. ‘Got it.’

  He asked a few more questions, but nothing came out of it, other than their complete lack of respect for women. He was glad Kim was nowhere around—she’d have eaten these two for breakfast!

  When Dave got back to his car, he sat for a moment and took a few deep breaths to calm his irritation, hoping the talk with Paul wouldn’t be quite like that one.

  Chapter 20

  As Amelia drove across the ramp into Eastern Edge, she was smiling. After two days in the hospital and one and a half at home, this was the first time she’d been able to get out by herself since the robbery, and she was looking forward to having some alone time with Paul. She’d been worried that driving by herself might trigger memories of the attack, but as soon as she’d headed off into the bright sunshine, she’d known it would be okay.

  Paul had visited Granite Ridge the evening before, and Amelia thought she saw a thawing in her mother’s attitude towards him. Her father, meanwhile, had come in early for a beer on the verandah with Paul, genuinely pleased to see the young man and to discuss farming with him. While Amelia wouldn’t wish her experience on anyone, she was glad something positive seemed to have come out of it: a relationship between her parents and the man she loved. Natalie had even lent her car to Amelia for this trip—Pushme was off getting a full service, as Amelia didn’t feel safe getting in the unreliable old car.

  The driveway was long and winding, so it wasn’t until she rounded the last corner that she saw the three utes, one with a trailer, parked in front of the house. On two of them was emblazoned Smithy’s Building Company in bold blue letters, while the third belonged to a local electrician. With a small gasp of surprise, Amelia pulled up and climbed out of the car. She stared at the house, her eyebrows raised, listening to the noise coming from inside—then jumped at the sound of smashing glass.

  ‘Ah, fuck it!’ yelled a male voice.

  In spite of her confusion, Amelia giggled until her ribs ached, then headed towards the house. Peanut was in his usual position as overseer, high in the branches of the pepper tree, washing his paws but keeping an eye on his kingdom.

  ‘What’s going on here, Peanut?’ Amelia asked, pausing at the bottom of the steps. She opened the front door and called, ‘Hello?’ Then she walked in
.

  She didn’t get two paces before she froze: the best word to describe the scene was ‘chaos’. The old scarred wooden kitchen benches were gone, replaced by modern, sleek-looking ones in creamy-stone laminate. A new stove was sitting on a pallet in the middle of the floor, and the window above the sink was now missing its glass. That appeared to be covering the floor.

  ‘Oh,’ said Amelia, picking her way through.

  A tradesman looked up. ‘G’day, love. Don’t mind the mess.’

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked, then realised it was a ridiculous question.

  ‘Guess you’re Amelia, then? Paul’s getting everything organised so you can move in as soon as possible.’

  ‘But there’s no money!’ Amelia blurted out.

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ answered the tradie with a grin, as he swept up the glass. ‘Your bloke’s got it covered.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ she said, fixing a polite smile in place.

  She wandered through the rest of the house, taking in the progress. A wall in the kitchen had been pushed out so that it now opened into the lounge room. The latter had barely been touched, except for some filling around the windows and a lick of paint—and a new TV set still in its box beside two recliner chairs, waiting for their plastic wrapping to be removed.

  The bedroom had also been painted. The fresh white ceiling was a massive change from the dark water stains that had covered it before. There was even art on the walls: a couple of simple, lovely landscapes instead of the sepia photos that Old Brian had hung, so faded you could barely make out what was in their frames.

  Picking her way back down the passage, Amelia heard a bang from outside. Looking through the front window, she realised that the tin roof of the verandah was being taken off. Sheets of forest-green mini orb were stacked close by to replace it.

  Amelia turned around slowly, and kept turning until she felt dizzy. What the hell was going on? She walked outside and stood beneath the pepper tree, shielding her eyes against the sun as she surveyed the house again. Peanut jumped down and rubbed against her legs. Bending, she scratched his ears, while a sense of foreboding built in her stomach. She knew she should be happy with what she was seeing—obviously Paul had found money somewhere. But where? It wasn’t that long ago he was telling her there wasn’t enough cash for a bag of cement.