Flare-up: a tense, taut mystery (A Cam Fraser mystery)

by Felicity Young

  Matt put one of his broad hands on her shoulder and pushed her back into a sitting position.

  ‘It’s not as simple as just giving myself up, love, surely you can see that. Why do you think I took off in the first place? It was to protect you and your mother. They’re like the Mafia, see, there’s a code of silence. Break it and if they can’t kill you they go for your loved ones.’

  ‘But you didn’t break it, did you? You just ran away.’

  ‘When I saw that bloke killed, I fell apart. I didn’t want anything else to do with them.’

  ‘You should have gone to the police, then. Was anyone else involved, did anyone else witness the murder?’

  ‘Nah.’ His eyes travelled to the left. She knew he was lying. Maybe Ivanovich had done the killing, but she suspected there was someone else involved too, someone even guiltier.

  ‘I could have gone to the police and got him put away, but who knows who else was going to come gunning for me? Besides, I knew I was in it up to my neck — been doing jobs for them, running stolen cattle over the state border in my truck, for several years now. I needed the money to pay for your mother’s medical bills.’

  ‘And now who has to pay for them?’

  ‘I sent you money whenever I could,’ he said quietly, looking down at his pepperoni pizza, picking at the crust with a dirty fingernail but not eating any.

  ‘You often went up north, didn’t you?’ Leanne asked, having no inclination to say anything to ease his guilt.

  ‘It’s a huge network, they’ve got branches all over the country.’

  ‘So what made you come back?’

  ‘I read about the body in the wool bale when I was up north. I knew you’d be involved with the investigation and I was worried about you.’

  ‘You were in Broome?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, Kununurra. I only stayed in Broome for a few days. I’ve been drifting around, dishwashing in pubs, crewed on a cray boat for a couple of weeks. If I stay anywhere too long they’ll find me and kill me, I know it.’

  ‘Give yourself up and we’ll organise protection for you. A good lawyer might be able to make a deal and arrange indemnity from prosecution.’

  ‘You want me to roll over?’

  His knowledge of criminal terminology was another letdown.

  ‘You set something up first, then call me.’ He took a pen from his top pocket and wrote down a mobile telephone number. ‘This is a new phone. It’s never been used, prepaid, and can’t be traced.’

  He didn’t trust her, but there was no surprise in that. She couldn’t trust him, either. But what the hell was she supposed to do — put him in an arm lock and drag him into the car?

  She took the slip of paper from him and put it in the back pocket of her board shorts. He stood up from the table and kissed her head. She sat like a statue and watched him leave.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Pizzle swept his hand around the cave with a flamboyant gesture of propriety. ‘Not bad, eh? What do you think, Cam, is this a home away from home or what?’

  Cam squinted into the cave through the oily smoke of several kerosene lanterns. Against one wall Pizzle had placed an army camp bed, and near it an unlit kero heater for when the nights turned cold. A rough pine table stood in the centre of the cave, on it a small camping stove with a billy jiggling upon the flickering blue ring. The table was laid for two: tin plates, mugs, camping-style knives and forks, plastic salt and pepper containers, and a bottle of tomato sauce through which the nearest lamp lanced spears of blood-red light.

  A couple of silver beer kegs next to the table served as stools, and a hand-hooked carpet, yellow with a green dragon on it, had been placed on the ground nearby.

  ‘Rita put it there,’ Pizzle said when he saw Cam looking at it. ‘For synthetics, she said.’

  Stacks of boxed supplies lined the rough walls and snaked back into the darkness. The cave wasn’t deep, if Cam remembered correctly, but the failure of the light to hit the back wall gave the illusion of a darkness that was neverending.

  ‘You look like you’re ready to withstand a siege, Pizz,’ Cam said, trying to make his voice sound normal, though it sounded extra-loud to him as it bounced off the flickering walls.

  ‘I can thank Rita for that, bloody well-organised that woman is. Brings me all sorts of goodies — lamb shanks tonight, I hope. She makes the best lamb shanks, thick gravy with lots of garlic and rosemary. I’m sure there’ll be enough for you if you want to stay.’

  Shit, Pizzle was making this sound like a social visit.

  Pizzle threw a gum leaf into the boiling billy and positioned two tin mugs near the stove. As he prepared their tea, Cam noticed how he favoured his left hand, keeping his right arm rigid against his chest.

  ‘How’s the shoulder?’ he asked, taking a punt.

  ‘Oh this?’ Pizzle pointed with his mug. ‘Fine now, Rita fixed it up. Just a bit stiff, no infection or nothing.’ He wrapped a rag around the billy’s handle and carefully poured the steaming tea into the mugs. Then he perched on one of the barrels, motioning to Cam to do the same. Grabbing a half-empty sugar packet, he poured the sugar straight into the mugs without asking Cam if he wanted any. This was how they used to have it at school. Unwanted memories flooded back with the first taste of the sickly eucalyptus-flavoured brew.

  Pizzle’s mind was travelling in a similar direction. ‘The old place hasn’t really changed that much, has it?’

  Cam said nothing. What could he say?

  ‘You really should talk about it, you know, Cam. Bad things happened in that place. Rita says it’s not good to bottle things up like that. Rita says that kids brought up in institutions often have trouble forming loving relationships, that’s why it’s important to talk about it.’

  ‘She’s a clever woman.’ In more ways than one, Cam added to himself.

  ‘Too right, she is. Could have gone to university, but chose the Salvos instead.’

  Cam thought back to her Academy-Award-worthy performance after the bale was discovered in the shearing shed; she’d missed an opportunity for a career on the stage too.

  ‘Then I guess she chose me.’ Pizzle giggled, blew on his tea then took a sip.

  ‘This was all her idea, wasn’t it?’

  Pizzle’s eyes darted all over the place, making him look more furtive and weasely than ever. The stubble on his face shone golden-brown in the lamplight, the shadows deepening the angles of his face and accentuating his overbite.

  ‘What idea was that, Cam?’ he said, nibbling at his lower lip and raising his eyebrows; he’d never been a good liar.

  Cam sighed. ‘I know what happened in the shearing shed that night, and I know it was Rita who helped you cover it up. It was all her idea. She’s a clever woman, you said so yourself. She reads a lot of crime books, especially the forensic type, and she knows all about crime-scene investigation. She knew that with you being an orphan and having no kids, there would be no DNA to compare yours with. She planted Jack Ivanovich’s DNA on your hairbrush and toothbrush to fool us, knowing these were usually the first places the police go to for DNA samples. He was a similar size and build to you and it was a perfect opportunity. How am I doing so far?’

  Pizzle took his hat off and scratched his head, muttering something to himself. Cam couldn’t ever remember seeing Pizzle without the cabbage-leaf hat. If he had, he might have noticed how different Ivanovich’s hair had been. Ivanovich’s was smoky-grey and unkempt; Pizzle’s was neat and brown, with no sign of grey at all.

  ‘Was it a new toothbrush, new hairbrush? They must have been to fool the lab boys, otherwise they would have detected other DNA on them. She must have given his hair a good yank to get the skin tags at the roots. How did it make you feel when she yanked the hair from Ivanovich’s scalp?’

  Pizzle looked at his hands. ‘I nearly puked, seeing her handle a dead body like that. It was awful. She didn’t like doing it either, but said it had to be done.’

  Cam continued
. ‘She wanted to make it look like you were the body in the wool bale and I can guess why. You got yourself involved in bad company, a stock-thieving ring run by some very nasty people. You wanted out and so they decided to kill you. By making it look like it was you dead in the wool bale, whoever else was involved would leave you alone. Rita hid you here, and when the kerfuffle had died down you were going to disappear together and start a new life somewhere else.’

  Bella slunk into the cave, nails clicking on the rocky floor. She sidled up to Pizzle and rested her head on the table, looking at Cam in a way that Pizzle was unable to. If only they could talk, Cam thought.

  Pizzle began to massage his dog’s head. He mumbled something but Cam missed it.

  ‘What was that you said?’

  In a louder voice Pizzle said, ‘Why should the Devil get all the best tunes?’

  Cam blew out a breath. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Rita’s always saying it. That’s what she said when I first told her Jack had asked me to help out in his organisation.’

  ‘She encouraged you to get involved?’ This was consistent with the idea of Rita as a ‘prison worm’, but for Cam, the manner of her death, her obvious refusal to name Pizzle’s whereabouts, had put an end to that theory. Whatever her reasons had been for marrying him, she had been loyal to the end.

  ‘She said being good had never got her nowhere. But she was as shocked as me when she found out what Jack and his mob were really like. By then I was in too deep.

  ‘Then a fella come up to me in the pub, said he’d give me . . .’ he waved a hand in the air, trying to find the big word, ‘immunity from prosecution or something if I blew the whistle on them. I told him some stuff then agreed to meet him a few days later so we could make a final plan. But Jack and his mates got wind of it and tried to do me in before I could tell him any more about it.’

  ‘Who was this fella?’

  Pizzle shrugged. ‘Said he was a Fed, that’s all I know.’

  Cam thought for a moment. ‘Was he working undercover as an RSPCA inspector?’

  Pizzle shrugged and glanced away, as if he suddenly felt he had told Cam too much. ‘Reckon he might have been.’

  The lack of conviction was getting aggravating. ‘You know he was.’

  Pizzle shrugged, wincing with the jerk of his sore shoulder. Cam looked at him through the hazy light, noticed the way his fingers scrabbled at the tabletop, the way he shifted his position on the keg from one buttock to the other.

  Cam softened his tone. ‘He scared you, didn’t he?’

  Pizzle nodded. ‘He said if I told anyone my arse was grass. Rita’s too.’

  ‘He didn’t mean cops, Piz, he meant that you weren’t to tell the other villains.’ Cam waited a moment, but gave up on that tack when he saw that nothing else was forthcoming. ‘What else did you talk about?’

  ‘Not much. Just stuff.’

  Cam couldn’t maintain the soft voice any longer, and said with an impatient snap, ‘It’s too late to be cagey with me now. Did you tell Rita about him?’

  ‘Nah, I wanted to think about it for a bit. Wasn’t sure what she’d say.’

  ‘Apart from Jack, who else was involved in this organisation?’

  Pizzle took off his towelling hat and wiped his face with it before putting it back on. ‘I don’t feel too good, Cam.’

  ‘Shane Brock?’

  ‘Mmm, him too.’

  ‘How did Ivanovich and Brock get to your place? We found no car.’

  ‘I picked up Jack, Shane drove himself. Jack told me we were going to meet him at my shed, pay him off and send him on his way. He was talking about me, I know that now, the dirty rotten bastard. I’m glad I killed him. I wouldn’t piss in his ear if his brain was on — ’

  ‘What happened to Brock’s car?’

  Pizzle waved his hand dismissively. ‘Rita and me dumped it in the old quarry in the state forest, shoved it over the edge. Didn’t explode, but — how come in the movies they always explode, Cam?’

  ‘What about Harry Giles, is he involved in this organisation too?’

  ‘I dunno, maybe.’

  ‘Raul Wetherby?’

  For the first time that night, Pizzle looked Cam in the eye. It was a strange look, a look that made Cam adjust his position on the wobbly keg.

  ‘Rita hates that man. Says it’s people like him who keep people like us poor. Says his business practices make him as bad as any murderer.’

  ‘You think he might be the man behind it all?’

  ‘Must be. That Fed seems to think he is. Rita’s always said Wetherby is rotten to the core, says he has shingles of the soul. She worked part-time for him for a while, says he was hard and un — uns — unscrewplus. He fired her because she wasn’t beautiful, that’s what she says. What do you think about that? Bloody shocking, I’d say. I told her he must’ve been blind to say that.’ He looked at the large-faced watch on his wrist. ‘She’ll be here soon, she’ll be ever so glad to see you. I hope you can stay. Lamb shanks for tea, she makes real good lamb shanks. We never got lamb shanks at St Bart’s, did we, Cam?’

  It was now or never. Cam took a breath. ‘She won’t be coming, Pizz, I’m sorry. I’m afraid she’s dead. Somebody murdered her.’

  Pizzle leaned across the table and clumsily punched his arm, narrowly avoiding spilling his mug of tea. ‘You shouldn’t joke about things like that, Cam, you know it’s not right.’

  Cam paused. ‘I’m not joking.’

  The silence dragged on. Pizzle was looking at him but not looking at him; Cam felt as if he were looking into the eyes of a dead man. A small bubble of saliva had collected in the corner of Pizzle’s mouth and quivered in and out as he breathed. Cam tried not to look at it.

  ‘You’ll have to come with me now, I’m afraid. She lied to me, Pizzle. She lied about what happened in the shed, she made me think you were dead. She’s dead because she lied to me. It’s important that you come with me now and tell me the whole truth — ’

  ‘No.’ Pizzle was shaking his head from side to side like a fretting animal in a cage, the saliva now dripping from his mouth. ‘No,’ he said again, pushing himself to his feet. His keg tipped over with a crash and rolled across the cave floor, coming to rest against one of the boxes of supplies.

  Cam realised then what was about to happen. He leaped to his feet and desperately scanned the contents of the tabletop. Surely if there were any epilepsy drugs around they’d be there in plain sight?

  But Pizzle’s sudden cry, not unlike the sound of the screaming fox earlier, told him it was too late for any drugs.

  Pizzle fell to the floor, his head connecting to the rock with a sickening thunk. He lay there, his body stiff as a plank, his eyes glazed and staring.

  Cam’s mind flashed to his latest first-aid course: Don’t try to restrain the sufferer, but at the same time protect him from hurting himself.

  He looked around for something to put under Pizzle’s head and grabbed the pillow from the camp bed. Beginning with a few twitches of his fingers, Pizzle’s arms and legs broke into rhythmic jerking. Wide and moist, his eyes bulged like turtle eggs, his jaws clamped like a steel trap, his back arched. When his head began to thump up and down, it was all Cam could do to keep it cushioned by the pillow. Bella slunk over to Pizzle and lay on the ground, just out of reach of the flaying arms and legs.

  The fit ended as quickly as it had begun. Pizzle lay like a wet rag on the cave floor. Both men were breathing heavily from the ordeal. Cam checked Pizzle’s tongue. It seemed to be in the right place, hadn’t fallen back to block his airway and didn’t appear to be bleeding.

  After a minute of deathlike stillness, Pizzle rubbed his face and tried to sit up. Cam placed his arm upon Pizzle’s uninjured shoulder.

  ‘Stay there for a moment, Pizz, I’ll get you some water.’ He moved over to one of the cave walls and reached for some bottled water he’d noticed earlier in one of the boxes of supplies. After unscrewing it, he supported
Pizzle’s thin back and put the bottle to his mouth.

  ‘Better?’ he asked when Pizzle had gulped down half the bottle.

  Pizzle nodded, wiped the tears from his eyes with the back of his hands and pulled himself into a sitting position.

  ‘I thought you were on medication for your epilepsy,’ Cam said.

  ‘Ran out. Rita was going to bring me more tonight when she came up with the lamb shanks.’

  At the sound of Rita’s name on his lips, Pizzle’s face crumpled in on itself. He rammed his fists into his eyes and dropped his head on his chest. ‘She’s really dead?’ he asked through his sobs.

  Cam bit on his bottom lip and nodded. He turned his back on Pizzle and busied himself in tidying up the tea things on the table. When some of the sobbing had subsided, he turned around again. ‘Will you come back with me now?’

  Pizzle nodded, pulled his hands away from his face and glanced down at the dark stain on his jeans. ‘I wet me duds.’

  ‘Do you have any clean ones?’

  Pizzle pointed to some boxes towards the back of the cave. ‘In one of those, I think.’

  Cam grabbed his torch and moved over to the dark shadows at the bottom of the cave. The roof was lower here and he had to stoop. Several boxes lay stacked on top of one another. He hefted the first down; it was heavy with cooking utensils and cans of dog food, and rattled when he dropped it to the floor. The next felt lighter. He prised open the cardboard lid and found toilet paper and plastic garbage bags. The clothes were in the last box: underwear, winter woollies, Driza-Bone oilskin. How long had Pizzle been planning on staying here, Cam wondered? He found a pair of folded jeans at the bottom of the pile, and a pair of track pants. They would be more comfortable than the jeans, he thought, reaching for them.

  He turned to ask Pizzle which ones he’d prefer, surprised to see his friend standing over him. He looked up from his squatting position, wondering, but for only a split second, why Pizzle would be holding a raised shovel in his hands.