I drummed the bedside table, waiting for him to finish.
'Well?' I prompted him, when it became apparent that he thought he had.
'Well what?'
'The half a dozen different makes and models. Was one of them an Fioo?'
'Jeez, you never give up, do you?'
'Somebody killed a friend of mine, Tom. If that red-nosed bloody redneck had anything to do with it I want to know.'
'Emily, the bloke's got a half a dozen witnesses who put him fifty k's away at the time of the killing.'
'Tom, getting answers out of you is like trying to pull teeth. Out of a chook.'
'Okay, okay.' I heard him take a deep breath. I could just about hear his eyes rolling. 'Yes, Emily, the tyre marks could have come from an Fioo.'
'So what now?'
'Whadderye mean "what now?"? I get dressed up and go to Darwin for a dressing down, and you go back to mopping vomit, or whatever it is you do down at the Dog. There's nothing in it, Emily. You're pissing in the wind. And by the way…'
'Yes?'
'I wouldn't go near Marsh for a while if I were you. Not just now. He's bloody ropeable. By the time I caught up with him he'd already spoken to Massie. Seems to think you might have been poking around his office. While you were his house guest, perhaps?'
'Fuck him.'
'Thank you for that, Emily. I'll bear your constructive attitude in mind when I'm getting strips torn off me by the Commissioner.'
I wasn't satisfied, but I could see I wasn't going to get anything more out of the wallopers, not until I put a bit more flesh onto the bones of the body of evidence.
'I truly am sorry about Darwin, Tom. Anything I can do for you?'
'You could try keeping yer nose outer police business.'
'Goes without saying, Tom.'
Goes without doing, too, I thought as I hung up the phone.
Dropping the Rods
I got out of bed, did an hour of yoga - the legacy of a six-month stint in a shared house in Fitzroy - then undid whatever good I'd done with a continental breakfast: a coffee and a smoke.
I sat out on the porch, staring at the bottom of the cup and feeling guilty.
While I'd been cavorting around the countryside with my new feller, I'd allowed myself to be distracted - as I'd done so often in my life. Lincoln had never shown me anything other than unconditional love and friendship, and I'd forgotten about him; he was one of the most decent human beings I'd ever encountered, and I'd let some bastard break his neck and done nothing about it.
Nor could I shake the feeling that I was in a peculiarly unique position to discover the truth: I had a foot in both camps, so to speak. For much of my life, that had been a disadvantage: I felt like a white woman in the black world, and a black woman in the white one. Now, perhaps, I had the opportunity to use my knowledge of both worlds, inadequate though it might be, to do something decent. And I had one other vital qualification: I cared. Others cared for him too, of course: Hazel and the rest of his family, for starters, but the whitefeller world was one that would be forever foreign to them.
I flicked the dregs of my coffee out into the grass and climbed to my feet, a renewed determination to do at least one decent thing in my life - to find out who'd killed him - smouldering in my breast.
What to do? Ideas skimmed through my head like the flock of ducks I startled once when I was out hunting at the Bullet Holes. And my problem now was the same as I faced then: which one to pick?
Blakie was still my number one contender. Although, after the debacle of my last attempted arrest, I was just about ready to put him down as an act of God. When he was out there, on his own country, he was virtually untouchable.
I wondered how much of my determination to track down Blakie was due to sheer jealousy. And how did things stand between Hazel and me anyway? Maybe it was time one of us attempted a reconciliation.
But Marsh's big black hat was still in the ring, whatever McGillivray reckoned. I had a stack of unanswered questions about the Carbine manager and his dealings with Moonlight Downs. Not the least of which was, given that he'd had McGillivray carpeted for asking a few simple questions, what did he have to hide?
But how to get at the bastard? I needed facts, information, proof. And to get them I needed an entree into that surly, self- satisfied world of hats and cattle.
What were my options? Go sniffing around the station? I'd tried that once, and what had I achieved? Bugger all.
Maybe I could tackle some of the bit players. But who were the bit players? Fidel, the old mechanic? Pull the other one. The other Carbine station hands? Forget it.
What else was on offer? Fencing contractors? Stock inspectors? The local roads blokes? What the hell would any of them know about Marsh and his malefactions? Unless they'd been involved in them, in which case poking my nose in could be a risky business.
My trouble was that I didn't have any status. I wasn't a bookie or a bouncer, I wasn't a cop. I couldn't go round putting the squeeze on people. I was just a member of the public.
Okay, so where was the logical place for a member of the public to begin? With the servants, of course. The public servants. One public servant in particular. What could be more straightforward than that?
Almost anything; I wasn't that naive. But Lance Massie's name had been breaking out all over the place of late. And if I did pay him a visit, even if he was in cahoots with Marsh, at least he wasn't likely to strangle me in the office. Even Northern Territory public servants didn't do that.
Lance Massie. How had Kenny described him? The Territory Government's bagman. Area Manager for the Department of Regional Development.
What the hell was 'regional development', anyway? It sounded like something that could cover a lot of dirty underwear, especially when it was being worn by the Territory Government. The only things developing in the Bluebush region were melanomas and salt pans.
The mine that had been the town's raison d'etre for forty years was down to the dregs. Small businesses were folding. Saturday morning was auction time: you'd see some poor mournful bastard huddled against the back fence while a hundred hungry bargain- hunters rummaged through the detritus of his life. Even out at the meatworks things were looking lean.
Maybe Massie wanted a few runs on the board. If there was anything untoward going on between Moonlight and Marsh - or any of the neighbours - something told me he'd be up to his Territory Government tie-pin in it.
But how was I going to get anything out of him? He knew who I was, for a start. Presumably Marsh had told him something about me, but how much? Did he even know what I looked like? And why did I find myself treading round the name so warily? I'd never even seen the guy, much less had any dealings with him. Or had I? The name had sounded familiar when Kenny first mentioned it to me. Unpleasantly familiar. Where had I come across it before?
I put on a Slim Dusty tape, parked myself out on the front porch, painted my toenails purple and watched Bluebush go about its morning ablutions. Didn't do that for long. Bluebush going about its morning ablutions was not a pretty sight, and the sounds were even worse: Griffo sounded like he was washing out his nostrils with a fire hose.
I went back in and sat at the kitchen table, humming along with Slim, who was yodelling his way through 'When the Rain Tumbles Down in July'. The classic early recording. He'd worn his Y-fronts tight in those days.
Lance Massie. He was something out of the old days as well, I was sure of it. The old Moonlight days. Something to do with my old man, perhaps? Lance bloody Massie. I rolled the name round my mouth, hit it with different accents and associations. It refused to give up its secrets, but the smell wouldn't go away.
I glanced at the books on the table: Gouging the Witwatersrand had worked its way to the top of the pile, as it tended to do. I studied a fading photograph: a line of chaps in long white socks and pith helmets standing around a hole in the ground; in the background, the poor bastards who'd dug it. The Bushveld, circa 1928. It reminded me
of some of the primitive early shows my old man and I had worked.
My father. Why did he keep bobbing up whenever I thought of Massie? Was he the connection?
Another unpleasant feeling arose from somewhere south of my stomach, worked its way up to my head and down to my fingers. They - the fingers - trembled as they dialled Jack's satellite phone. I'd had a sudden insight into where I might have met the bastard.
'Dad, a quick question…' I could hear heavy machinery roaring away in the background.
'Better make it a very quick one, Emmy. I'm perched on top of a thirty foot tower with a wrench in one hand and a hundred yards of drill rod in the other.'
'What are you holding the phone with?'
'You wouldn't want to know. Shoot.'
'Remember when Brick threw us off Moonlight?'
'Careful…'
'The government feller involved, don't suppose he had a name?'
'Aw…jeez, Emily!'
'What's wrong?'
'You just made me drop the fuckin rods! Why'd you have to go and remind me of that jumped-up little piece of shit? Sure he had a name. Still got one. See him sneakin round the traps in his lemon-scented limo. Sir Lancelot bloody Massie.'
'Thanks, Dad.'
Thanks a lot, I brooded as I hung up the phone. Public servant or not, I could scratch Lance Massie from my list of helpful resources. He and the Tempests had a history.
I'd only seen the man once. Once was enough. He'd been sitting out on the veranda of the Moonlight Homestead, Akubra hat jammed onto one end of him, RM Williams boots onto the other, cigar in between. Trying to out-cowboy the cowboy sitting next to him. The cowboy, Brick Sivvier, was a pig of the first order, to be sure, but at least his porcinity wasn't an affectation. Throwing us off the station came natural to him. It was a Queensland thing: he was just cleaning out the deadwood.
Massie was something else. Even at fourteen, and with a single glance at my disposal, I'd been able to see that. He was a sleek, slippery individual, a walking Hall of Mirrors. If he'd ever had a self, it had long since disappeared under a dozen different layers and accretions. He was an impersonation of an impersonation, a natural-born apparatchik who'd slithered out of the womb and sniffed to see which way the wind was blowing. If, by some miracle, Kenny Trigger's revolution ever did come about, Massie would be the one strutting about in the Mao jacket and the Stalinesque moustache.
I replayed the veranda scene in my mind.
Jack had come to pick up his termination pay, and discovered that the Warlpuju were being terminated as well. We'd met them on the road to Bluebush, and Lincoln had given us the story. Sivvier had told them to pack up and piss off, and he'd followed his words with actions: he'd bulldozed the humpies, shot the dogs, shut the store, hunted the nurses, clobbered a few fellers who got in his way. When the shiny-pants government feller arrived Lincoln had complained, sought some kind of official redress, only to have Massie tell them it was a matter of private property, nothing to do with him. Indeed, should they continue to trespass, Sivvier would have every right to call in the cops.
Now the blokes responsible were relaxing on the veranda in front of us. Jack gave them a cheerful wave. 'That's Sir Lancelot,' he muttered, 'the little government greaser.' Sivvier maintained his usual Easter Island demeanour - whoever christened him 'Brick' knew what they were about - but Massie responded with a brief, starchy wave. The sort of thing the Queen trots out for the tour of Botswana.
When we went round to the pay office, Jack spotted Sivvier's Range Rover and a flash government four wheel drive parked under the magnificent banyan tree. Five minutes and a nifty bit of winch-work later we were on our way, Jack extending another salute to the blokes on the veranda.
When Massie and Sivvier returned to the carpark, they found their vehicles dangling like a pair of fluffy dice, twenty foot up the tree.
Tom McGillivray told us that a warrant for Jack's arrest had come out from the highest levels, but that the lowest levels - he and his colleagues - were so busy pissing themselves laughing they couldn't figure out what they were supposed to be charging him with. Word was that Massie had been gunning for Jack ever since, his only restraint being the fact that any move he made was sure to revive memories of an event he'd rather have forgotten.
Lance Massie. Not likely to be particularly co-operative when he heard my name on the phone.
But what if he heard somebody else's?
A Bit of a Local Legend
'Massie!'
The voice coming down the phone sounded as if it had been having Man of the World lessons from Julio Iglesias: it was beautifully modulated, mellow and forceful. And phoney as hell. This was my man all right.
'Mr Massie? My name's Caroline Crowe. I don't think we've met, but I've heard a lot about you. I'm with the Territory Digest.'
'Caroline!' I could feel him pulling in his paunch and sharpening his tie. The Digest was the Territory Government's big-budget, taxpayer-funded PR rag. When it called, the faithful answered. 'Of course, I've seen your work. How can I help you?'
'We're doing a cover story on investment opportunities in the Territory, and I was wondering whether you'd have an hour or two to fill me in on developments in the Bluebush Region. From what I hear you're a bit of a local legend.'
'Well, thank you.'
'I'll be coming up through Bluebush around two this afternoon. Is that too short notice?'
'Of course not.' I could hear a set of chops being vigorously licked. 'It'll be a pleasure. I'm slotting you into my diary as we speak.'
'Great! Ciao!'
'Ciao!'
I spent the rest of the morning packing myself into the tight little yellow silk number that was the closest thing to killer bee I'd been able to pick up at the op-shop. I applied liberal helpings of mascara and lipstick, cleaned off the stray clumps with a cotton ball and blow-waved my hair until it was nearly straight. I grabbed my new pharmacy sunnies, a pair of big-framed Versace knock - offs that I hoped would prevent his recognising me if he ever spotted me in my usual ragged-arsed blackfeller outfit. And at one- thirty I climbed aboard a pair of stilettos and headed for the door.
I thought it was all for nothing, though, when I wobbled into Massie's monument to reflective glass and external plumbing and found my old mate Candy Wilson parked at the receptionist's desk.
'Can I help you?' she intoned, then gawped and gasped, 'Emily! Is that you under there?'
I just about fell off my shoes but I didn't have time for explanations. There was a goggle-eyed git in tight pants and a purple shirt bouncing out of the office behind her. I shot her a desperate look, then looked at him and smiled. 'Mr Massie? Caroline Crowe.'
'Please,' he smiled, gliding past the befuddled Candy and out across the floor like something out of Disney on Ice, 'call me Lance.'
'Nice of you to make yourself available at such short notice, Lance.'
'My pleasure,' he beamed, wrapping his hand around my own and his eyes around my chest. 'We're always happy to co-operate with the Digest.'
Massie was just as I remembered him, only more so. Thinner on top but with a nasty little mo for compensation. The bursting shirt and nasal capillaries suggested that happy hour had broken out and taken over the whole week. That explained why he was still in Bluebush, where your better-class alcoholic could just about go unnoticed. He was wearing a sign around his neck which said: 'ROTARY, GOLF CLUB, PRAWN COCKTAILS IN A SILVER DISH'. Well, he wasn't. The closest golf course was five hundred kilometres away. But he might as well have been.
He was in his late forties, dripping with Thai silk, Italian jewellery, Spanish leather and Outback sleaze. Did he always dress like this, or had he nipped out for a grease and oil change when he heard that the Digest was coming?
He looked me in the shades. I'm not a tall person. Neither was he: Massie by name but not by nature.
'Please,' he crooned. 'Come in. Candy!' A snap, this; evidently he was unimpressed with the way she was struggling to wipe the ga
wk off her gob. 'Coffee, please!' He turned back to me and smiled salaciously. 'Or can I tempt you with something a little stronger?'
Candy twisted her nose at his back and poked her tongue out.
I gave him my goofiest smile and assured him that coffee would be fine. The anti-boss vibes radiating from Candy suggested that she wasn't about to rat me out. As he waltzed me into the office, I slipped her a wink. She responded with a 'Be careful!' grimace.
Massie's inner sanctum was a rococo variation on the theme which dominated the rest of the building: outback-crypto-fascist, a veneer of public-service rectitude overlaying a profound crass- ness that expressed itself in singing fish, flashing mirrors, golf trophies, a bronzed bull's scrotum and a bar that wouldn't have been out of place in a Gold Coast brothel.
The bookshelves were strictly motivational: Chicken Soup for the Soul, Sun Tzu and the Art of Business, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Awaken the Giant Within. The gold- framed MBA on the wall looked like a mail-order job from the University of Las Vegas.
By the time Candy arrived with the coffee, Massie and I were getting along famously. I was playing it smooth and cool, he was playing it as fast and loose as his pants would let him. He leaned forward, put his chin on his fingers and fixed me with a piercing stare.
'So how long have you been with the Digest?'
'Not long; just a few months.'
'And before that?'
'Canberra. Aboriginal Liaison Unit with Mining and Resources.'
'Uh, Canberra!' he said dismissively. 'I was offered a rather senior position down there recently…' 'Oh?'
'No names, no pack drill. Turned it down, of course. Once the Outback gets into your blood,' he sighed, 'you're never quite the same.'
His only awkward moment came when I told him the angle I wanted to take in the story.
'You're looking at Aboriginal enterprise?' he gasped, just about falling out of the papa-bear chair.
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