At last he understood what the monk had meant.
***
Charlie and Jo joined them, parking the light tanker near the Commodore.
It was a race to see who could reach the other first, though Cam had no memory of the movement. One minute he was in the car, the next he was clasping her to him. He wrapped his arms around her slender body, at first fearful he might break her, knowing seconds later that he never could, even if he’d wanted to.
‘I heard it all on the radio,’ he said.
‘I had to do it — you understand that, don’t you Cam? I’m sorry, I must have put you through hell, but I had to, I couldn’t let them burn — ’
Cam put his finger to her lips to hush her. He was aware of Leanne and Charlie, standing at a tactful distance away, looking down upon the fire ground from the lookout, Charlie nonchalantly smoking a cigarette. Level with them above the valley, a pair of wedge-tailed eagles hovered on the thermals above the burned ground.
He held Jo at arm’s length to inspect her. She’d taken her helmet off and her hair was standing up in sooty spikes, crowning her face, which was black except for the area around her eyes that had been protected by the goggles. She stank of sour smoke and grease; the smile as it cracked through her dry lips was sheepish and self-conscious.
Cam thought she had never looked more beautiful.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Back at the truck parking bay, Cam and a Toorrup constable met with the owner of the stolen stock. With the two police vehicles as escort, the farmer drove the road train, its tyres now fixed, back down the highway, turning off at the dusty dirt road leading to his property.
Cam and the constable helped him unload the cattle. They shifted the cows first, settling them in a paddock near the back gate. Two magnificent stud bulls were the last down the ramp and were put back into the cattle yards from which they had been taken, alongside a large shed. The old tin sheets cracked and groaned as the sun beat down and the temperature began to climb.
The two cops leaned on the rusty metal rungs of the fence surrounding the yard and watched the farmer rip apart a hale bale and toss the biscuits to the hungry animals. When he’d finished, he joined them at the rail. All three stood for a moment in contemplative silence, watching the bulls munching and content. A crow alighted on one of the distant rails and greeted the bulls with a long, low drawl.
With his foot upon the lower railing the farmer leaned inwards and said, ‘Can’t thank you fellas enough. Those animals were my pension fund, without them I reckon I’d have had to sell up.’
‘A fine bunch of cattle.’ Cam rested his chin on his arms, using the rails to keep his body upright.
‘Yeah, a bummer I missed the bull sales, I was going to be taking these two down to Wetherby’s first thing.’ He exhaled. ‘Could have all been a helluva lot worse, but.’
The Toorrup constable took his leave. Cam knew he should be following him, but stayed a moment longer. He was feeling more relaxed by the moment, his eyes as heavy and gritty as the rusty rail he was leaning upon.
It felt good to stand here and feel the early morning sun’s rays seeping into his bones, soothing the tension in his shoulders. He’d give himself one more minute here then call in at the station on his way home and see if he could organise the morning off. Rod wouldn’t mind taking it from here; the booking, charging and interviewing were Toorrup’s business now. He’d touch base with Rod later in the day after a much-deserved snooze.
He wondered if Jo was in her bed now, showered and fresh, clean head on clean pillow, crisp cool sheets on warm soft body . . .
The crackle and squawk of the Commodore’s radio broke into his daydream. He jerked his head up from his arms; dots and stripes from the sudden glare patterned his retinas.
‘Caught you kipping, eh, mate?’ The farmer laughed as Cam staggered to the radio.
So much for calling Rod later. He answered the radio with a terse ‘Yes.’
‘Good work, Cam. We’ve contacted Matt Henry — he’s being escorted to the station and should be here soon. With Giles under arrest and in hospital, he says he’ll turn Queen’s evidence and tell us everything about that murder he witnessed.’
‘Good.’ Though it was nothing short of what Cam expected. ‘What’s Timothy Giles got to say for himself?’
‘He’s admitted to the attempted stock theft, but said it was a one-off.’
‘Yeah, right, and I’m taking up ballet. What about Rita’s murder, did he fess up to that?’
‘Nothing yet, but it’s early days. I’m sending a team over to search his and his father’s house.’
‘Someone must have picked them up from the highway after Rita’s murder. Might be worth a press release.’
‘Already on it. Oh, and I also wanted to let you know that your ute’s been found.’
The sleepy cloud lifted and Cam was wide awake now. ‘Where? Any sign of Pizzle — I mean Pilkington?’
‘The ute was found abandoned in some scrub just off the highway, near the Wetherby saleyards. I reckon he was hoping to steal another car from the car park there then make his way to the city and lose himself.’
Cam thought for a moment. ‘Yeah, maybe. What about my gun, has it turned up?’
‘No, I’m afraid not. Pilkington must still have it.’
‘Shit.’ Pizzle on the loose was bad enough; Pizzle on the loose with a loaded gun was enough to make Cam’s gut squirm. He exhaled. His eyes wandered back to the feeding bulls. Fine animals, one so quiet the farmer was able to pass his hand over its gleaming flank.
Then a thought hit him with the force of a fist to the face. ‘Oh, Christ!’
‘What is it?’ Rod asked.
Cam gripped the mike as he sprang in to his vehicle. ‘He’s not after any bloody car, Rod. He’s at the bull sales, he’s after Raul Wetherby — he still thinks he killed Rita!’
***
Even with the siren screaming and the blue and red lights flashing, Cam knew he would miss the start of the sales, but hoped fervently that Wetherby would hold off on his grand entrance until after they had begun.
He tried several times to contact the Wetherby office to warn him of the danger, receiving nothing but a recorded message. Then he remembered hearing how the conglomerate was to be closed for the day to encourage employee participation. Shit shit shit!
Rod was sending a backup unit from Toorrup, but they would be at least half an hour behind him. After one more fruitless try at contacting Wetherby, he tossed his phone back onto the passenger seat and slapped the steering wheel with the flat of his hand in frustration.
The Wetherby’s car park was jam-packed, an atmosphere of carnival all around. Someone had erected a blow-up castle near the saleyard entrance and small children were laughing and screaming as they bounced. Cam swerved his way among the parked cars, just missing a sausage-sizzle stand, and came to a stop in a no-parking zone near the loading bays. Grooms were unloading some snorting thoroughbreds from a horse truck.
Cam slammed his car door and raced to the gate. One of the horses shied into another, frightened by the sound, and the groom holding the lead rope swung left and right like a puppy’s limp toy.
Cam was barely aware of the commotion his arrival was causing as he elbowed his way past a rodeo clown standing at the entrance to collect tickets. He almost knocked the red nose from the man’s face, oblivious to the blue streak of swearing that followed him from the gate.
Once through the front entrance he had to jump to see above the pressing crowds before him. He could just see the tips of some heads standing on a raised platform, about twenty metres within the yard’s perimeter. There was a solid block of people between him and the stage: kids on dads’ shoulders, young people standing on the railings, the more serious punters closer to the action clutching catalogues, sometimes waving them about.
As he shoved his way forward, the blare of the loudspeakers drowned the complaints of the people he was jostling.
; There was a loud cheer; hats were hurled into the air, people clapped and whistled. Cam suspected Raul Wetherby had climbed to the podium, although he still couldn’t see him.
But if he was out of sight for Cam, surely he’d be out of sight for someone who needed a clear shot?
Then he remembered the walkways above him. Cam raised his head and looked up There were people up there, leaning against the railings and looking into the cattle pens below.
He glimpsed the figure of a small man, sandwiched between two heavy, hatted cowboy types. The figure ducked, reappearing in a less congested section of the walkway. The small man wore a towelling hat, its brim as ragged as an old cabbage leaf, his arms loose at his sides.
Cam cupped his hands and yelled at Wetherby to get down, but his voice was swallowed by the auctioneer’s nasal gabble over the PA. The man next to Cam, oblivious to his uniform, jabbed an elbow into his ribs and told him to keep his fucking mouth shut.
Cam pushed the man aside and shoved his way further through the crowd to the metal steps of the walkway. A group of girls crammed on the bottom steps hurled abuse as he stepped on fingers in his hurry to get past.
On the walkway now, he yelled at Pizzle, and this time he was heard. Pizzle did a double-take, looking for a split second as if he might topple off the walkway. There was a small group of people between them. Cam called to Pizzle to stay where he was. One woman responded to his shout with a blank stare; a young girl smiled as if she thought he was part of the day’s entertainment.
Pizzle darted a look at Cam. Then he reached into the waistband of his jeans and slowly withdrew the stolen gun.
Cam’s hand moved to his holster, flicked the press stud and gripped the butt of his replacement pistol. Unlike Leanne, he was not a crack shot, never had been, even before the disfiguring burns to his right hand. Even if he was good enough to hit his target and not some innocent bystander, he knew he couldn’t guarantee a non-fatal shot. The last thing he wanted to do was kill Pizzle. But how the hell was he going to stop Pizzle from killing Wetherby?
Pizzle raised his hand, the gun pointing directly at his target. Cam felt a shudder of panic run through him.
A man was driving a group of black bulls down the race below them, cracking his whip to keep the beasts moving. The shot was lost between the whip cracks. Only Cam and Pizzle reacted to the ping as the bullet ricocheted off a metal fence post near Wetherby’s head. Wetherby, still intent on following the bidding, remained where he stood, though he did put his hand to his ear for a moment as if feeling a sudden breeze.
Cam was closer to Pizzle now, could see his white face and the shine of the sun on his stubble, caught a whiff of his BO.
‘Put the gun down, Pizzle!’ he shouted.
The woman between them finally realised what was happening. She gripped her partner’s sleeve and allowed Cam to squeeze his way past.
Cam yelled to the men on Pizzle’s other side. ‘Get back!’
Pizzle fired the gun into the air, waving it like a maniac. The woman screamed; the men next to Pizzle dropped to the metal surface of the walkway. A ripple coursed through the crowd, though it was only those immediately surrounding Cam and Pizzle who seemed to be aware of what was going on. The stream of the auctioneer’s voice continued, the rhythm broken only by the acknowledgement of the bids from the front row.
Pizzle leaped over the prone forms of the men on his other side and dashed towards the nearest steps, his feet rattling along the metal ramp like a machine gun. He jumped the last few steps then vaulted the safety railing into the race.
The black bulls were still being driven to the open yard behind, and started charging straight for him. Cam saw Pizzle pull himself onto the rail on the other side, just missing the bulls’ trampling feet. They were between Cam and Pizzle now, and all Cam could do was helplessly stand and wait until they’d thundered past.
He glimpsed Pizzle’s small figure leaping more rails until he reached an empty race. Within seconds he had left the crowds behind and was sprinting past the abattoir, making a beeline towards the feed mills.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Fifty metres ahead, Cam saw Pizzle scurrying his way through a line of trucks parked in a loading area beneath the grain silos. When he reached the double doors at the entrance to the mill complex, he yelled with frustration at discovering them locked.
He turned from the doors and looked towards the sky. Cam followed his gaze up the fifteen-metre service ladder running up the side of the building. His heart almost jolted to a stop when he realised Pizzle’s intentions.
‘No, Pizzle, wait!’
The bottom rungs of the ladder were missing for safety reasons, and Pizzle had to scramble onto the roof of a tanker truck to reach the first of them. He glanced down at Cam, still puffing his way through the loading zone, and hesitated, just for a moment. Then he shook his head at Cam and began to climb.
The silo complex was made up of layers, like a multilevel car park. The tops of the smaller silos were reached via the first and second levels, the bigger silos via the third; a grid of pipes connected the different storeys. When the plant was operational, augers ground and mixed, ovens baked, and high-pressure pipes drove the mixture through sieves to pelletise it ready for the animals. The noise was usually deafening, but with the operations closed for the day, all Cam could hear was the gritty shuffle of Pizzle’s footsteps on the rungs of the ladder, and the hollow ringing when he missed his footing and donged the rungs with his steel-capped toes.
Cam’s panic increased when he climbed onto the truck and reached for the treacherous ladder. Pizzle was a small, dark shape above him, his footsteps vibrating the rungs under Cam’s fingers.
Heights are not a problem. Heights are just a question of confidence, not a problem at all, Cam told himself. He pushed on, willing himself to perform coordinated, confident movements, his steps upon the rungs alternating smoothly with the movements of his hands.
At the second tier he stopped climbing and stepped from the ladder to the platform, passed an arm across his dripping forehead and breathed out a sigh of relief at having made it this far.
He was standing alongside the belly of a giant silo, its top jutting out from the third-floor platform above him. In the same way, the metal floor on which he stood served as the roof of three smaller silos below. Large, flexible pipes curled at intervals through their sealed tops, ready to pump them full of grain or processed stock feed. Their end funnels came out at the loading bay below to enable easy filling of the trucks.
And it was all controlled by computer, Cam remembered Wetherby’s receptionist telling them. A glass-walled box with rows of monitors, knobs and dials occupied one end of the landing and he assumed it must be one of the substations
Satisfied he now had a rudimentary idea of the layout of the place, Cam returned to the ladder and his pursuit of Pizzle, whose footsteps he could hear ringing on the metal floor above his head.
But after only climbing a few more feet, he found the ladder blocked by a large sign taking up several rungs: ‘Top floor closed for maintenance.’ Pizzle had obviously ignored the warning sign and somehow managed to climb around it.
Cam eased his way back down the ladder until he was once more standing on the second floor. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he called the backup team who said they were ten minutes away from the yard. Ten minutes. A lot could happen in ten minutes.
He hung up after telling them his location at the feed mill.
Moving back to the ladder, he cupped his hands and yelled up to Pizzle on the third floor. ‘Pizzle, mate, come down, we need to talk.’ The only answer he received was the echo of his own voice. There had to be another way up, there had to be internal access to the third floor.
He scanned the platform and saw some double doors identical to those at the ground-floor entrance, probably leading to a stairway. But when he tried them he discovered they too were locked. He should have guessed.
Back at the ladder, Cam once
more began to climb. When he reached the obstructive sign he leaned out to peer around it. Several pipes jutted from the structure’s frame, which he figured he could use as substitute hand and foot holds, though negotiating his way up from there on would be awkward; he wasn’t as small and nimble as Pizzle.
He hesitated. What the hell did Pizzle think he was achieving by going up there? Then he reminded himself that Pizzle was not rational at the best at times. He was standing on an unfenced platform twenty metres above the ground with a loaded gun, and that was all that bore thinking about.
Cam took a deep breath. ‘Here goes nothing.’ He stepped onto the final rung before the sign.
Heights are not a problem.
He took a breath, then, holding on to the ladder with one hand, stretched his leg out as far as it would go until he felt his instep connecting with one of the protruding pipes. He propelled his body sideways, his left hand lunging for another pipe at shoulder level. For a split second, between when his right hand let go and his left connected with the pipe, only his right foot remained connected to anything solid.
He made it.
Another few steps up his improvised ladder and he was level with the edge of the third floor.
‘I’m coming up, Pizzle,’ he shouted, his hands meeting with the first rung of the third floor’s thin safety rail. Not wanting to climb half a metre higher than he had to, he squeezed himself under it. He felt the metal treads on the floor pressing into his stomach and chest as he slid along the surface, unwilling to stand until he was well away from the edge.
But before he could climb to his knees, he found himself looking down the barrel of his own gun.
Flare-up: a tense, taut mystery (A Cam Fraser mystery) Page 23
