‘Pretty sure.’
‘Normally I would have asked Pepper an Arch, but they don’t want to go anywhere near Blakie. Tried to get the ranger to come along—he knows the country as well as any whitefeller, but his office told me he was out bush.’
I had a few doubts of my own, not the least of them about the quality of Tom’s support staff. I glanced back at the second police Toyota behind us: the A-Team. There were five of them, and I couldn’t help but notice the lingering, malicious attention they’d paid to their equipment—cuffs, clubs, guns, sprays, even a net— when we were loading up. Griffo was there, of course, as were the other two who’d come off the worse for the wear after their last encounter with Blakie. Payback was clearly as much an incentive for them as was any desire to enforce the law.
Tom must have detected my concerns. ‘Don’t worry about the boys’—he jerked a thumb at the car behind us—‘they’ve all done their cross-cultural communication course.’
I looked back in time to see the cross-cultural communicator in the driver’s seat open his window, limber his lips and let fly with a glob of spit, much of which ended up on his colleagues in the back.
We parked the cars a couple of kilometres away from the cave, and I led the party up into the southern side of the gorge. We reached my vantage point opposite Pangulu Hill just before it became too dark to see what we were doing. There was a bit of sporadic grumbling from the troops when Tom wouldn’t allow them a fire, but they did have thermoses of coffee—rummed-up coffee, from the smell of it—hamburgers in foil and thick government swags. They were doing a damn sight better than I had last time I was here, chasing Blakie on a breakfast of orange pith and adrenalin.
McGillivray shook me awake before dawn, and I led him up to the ridge, both of us stumbling about in the dark while his team remained in their swags. ‘Won’t be needing em just yet,’ he explained. We stretched out alongside each other, concealed among a row of scrubby emu bushes that rimmed the ridge, until it grew light enough to see.
‘Okay,’ I told him. ‘It’s on the opposite cliff. Fix your glasses on a point about half way between the gneiss and the mica schist.’
‘The nice and what?’
‘Reddish rock on the left, yellow one on the right. Little patch of greenery there. Hoya vine.’
He studied it, took the glasses away, squinted, rubbed his eyes, then tried again.
‘Got it,’ he said at last.
‘Some sort of cave in there,’ I explained.
‘Hmmmm…’ came the rather dubious response. ‘I see.’
‘So what do we do now?’
‘We wait.’
‘How long?’
‘Till we’re sure he’s at home. Already tried taking him in the open once. Don’t want to make that mistake again. We’re only gonna get one chance. We go sniffin around down there he’ll know for sure.’
He nestled down among the shrubbery, and we made a bit of desultory conversation. The talk turned to my early years: the front veranda, the home brew, the old man.
Tom had the scarifying task of informing my father of my mother’s death. It was how they first met. Tom was a constable then, officer-in-charge of the Borroloola Police Station. Alice had been travelling with some of our countrywomen in the back of a utility which rolled out on the highway. She’d been thrown and crushed.
It wasn’t until months afterwards that Jack realised how considerate Tom had been about the whole ghastly business, how seriously he took the role of a small-town cop: he’d brought us into town from the station where Jack was working, helped arrange the funeral and dropped in, from time to time, during the miserable months that followed.
Jack got the job on Moonlight soon afterwards. When Tom McGillivray turned up a few years later, promoted to sergeant and transferred to Bluebush, the acquaintanceship developed into a friendship.
It may have been the fact that he’d had to deliver bad news to my old man once before that made him suddenly wary: ‘When we go in, Em, you stay here, right? Like we agreed? I’ll leave you with a radio so you can listen in, but no more heroics.’
I glanced at his team of sleeping uglies. ‘Don’t worry, I wouldn’t want to put them under any pressure. Right now, though, I’ve got other pressures on my mind. Or my bladder.’
‘Uh. Right. You go and kill a tree, I’ll keep an eye out for Blakie.’
I dropped down from the ridge, made my way back down the faceted slopes until I came to the only tree in sight—a heavily canopied bloodwood that had somehow managed to survive and prosper in this stark environment.
I hitched my dress up and squatted low, then surrendered myself to the eternal pleasures of an early-morning piss in a lovely, lonely landscape.
‘Ahem…’
The cough came from directly above.
I sprang to my feet, whipped my undies up and my dress down, took a step backwards, lost my footing, stumbled, recovered and looked up.
For a moment I could discern nothing but the thick foliage of the tree, then I spotted a pair of boots on a branch in its upper reaches. The boots were attached to a pair of bare, bronzed legs. I tried to place him but the bugger was wearing khaki clothing which seemed to disappear among the greenery. It wasn’t until I spotted a red beanie higher up the tree that I realised who it was.
‘Jojo Kelly!’
His head popped out of a thicket of leaves. ‘Morning, Emily.’
‘What the fuck are you doing up there? Aside from perving at my bum?’
‘Looking for you, actually.’
‘Well you found me.’
‘I meant youse—plural. If you’re with Tom McGillivray. Got some garbled message saying he wanted a hand.’
‘Well you found us plural. Now get down from that bloody tree so I can make a citizen’s arrest.’
‘Hang on.’
A minute or two passed. ‘Look,’ I said, exasperated and jiggling, ‘are you coming down? I’d like to finish my piss in peace.’
‘Go right ahead, don’t mind me. What’s for breakfast?’
‘A bollocking from McGillivray, I hope. He’s up on that ridge, by the way.’
‘I know. I spotted him just before you made your grand entrance.’
I gave him another thirty seconds. A lot of leaf-rustling took place, but there was no sign of his descent.
‘Hello!’ I called.
‘Hmmm?’
‘What are you actually doing up there?’
‘It’s a nice tree. Why shouldn’t I be up it? Besides, there’s a hive.’ I noticed a few bees sidling in from the grasslands below. ‘We can have honey in our tea.’
‘We’re not here for a fucking picnic,’ I grumbled at him as I climbed back up the slope, annoyed, and yet, at the same time, grudgingly amused and curious to know what he was up to.
The police camp, by the time I got back to it, was a hive of another kind: the cops were up and about and moving around as though they meant business. They were checking their watches and guns, adjusting their body armour, uncoiling ropes and nodding at McGillivray as he rattled off a string of orders.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked.
McGillivray looked at me with an unusually appreciative eye. ‘I owe you one, Emily. He’s there all right.’
‘You saw him? Blakie?’
‘Just now. Poked his big ugly mug out through the vines, took a look around and went back inside. He won’t get away this time.’
‘Good. Go get him! Your mate’s here, by the way.’
He paused, gazed at me blankly.
‘The ranger.’
‘Jojo? He’s here?’ The men looked at each other, momentarily taken aback. McGillivray studied the slope I’d just climbed. ‘Where is he?’
‘Up a tree, last I saw him.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘That’d be right. Whatever, we don’t need him now. Half a dozen of us ought to be enough to do the job.’ He gave me a hand-held radio, then drew his men together for a final briefing. ‘Righto, you
lot, now listen up. We don’t know whether he’s armed or not: he didn’t have a gun on him last time we saw him, but that doesn’t mean a thing. He could have an arsenal in there for all we know, so don’t take any chances.’
They moved out in what was obviously a carefully prepared manoeuvre, and, to my surprise, they actually seemed to know what they were doing.
Four of them moved out to opposite sides of the rock face and began to make a steady ascent, while the two others—one of them McGillivray—zig-zagged across the valley floor and up through the desert oaks at the base of Pangulu Hill. I could eavesdrop on their whispered conversations by means of the radio.
I lay among the bushes and watched, so absorbed by their manoeuvring that I didn’t hear Jojo until he came up and stood behind me.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
‘They’re about to grab Blakie Japanangka.’
‘Ah. That explains it.’
The four men on the hill had assembled directly above the cave by now: two of them prepared to make a descent, the others wedged themselves into support positions on the ridge.
I nodded at the cliff. ‘There’s a cave in there.’
‘I see.’
‘His hideout.’
‘Hideout?’
I looked up at him and frowned. ‘Yes, and if you can’t do anything other than repeat everything I say, perhaps you could at least stay out of sight; you’ll ruin the surprise.’
‘Oh, I doubt that,’ he said.
Then he popped over the edge of the ridge and began to descend the slope in a casual, sideways lope, his big feet ploughing long furrows into the dirt and raising clouds of dust.
‘What are you doing?’ I called out, jumping up and suddenly finding myself tumbling down beside him.
‘Love those entrances, don’t you?’ he asked as he helped me to my feet.
I spat the sand out of my mouth and looked up to see McGillivray waving at us to get out of sight. Jojo reacted as if the wave was a greeting, gave a cheerful reply and resumed his descent; I had little choice but to do the same. By the time we reached the valley floor, McGillivray was just about purple. The radio crackled in my hands. ‘Emily! Jojo!’ he hissed. ‘Get out of sight or I’ll bloody well throttle the pair of you!’
Jojo had the message by now. ‘Righto, righto, if you insist,’ he murmured, then we sat with our backs against one of the sandstone blocks scattered across the valley floor. He immediately seemed to lose interest in the imminent arrest, his attention caught by a sand shrimp slowly working its way beneath the dirt and leaving a tiny furrow in its wake. He picked at it with a blade of grass, then reared back in feigned horror when it rose out of the dirt.
He looked at me and asked, ‘How did they know he was here, by the way?’
‘I followed him.’
‘Ah. I see.’
The two coppers on the rock face were directly above the cave by now. I looked around from our boulder in time to see them pause, brace themselves, nod at each other, then hurl themselves in.
A long silence ensued, during which Jojo climbed to his feet, clambered up our rock and sat there watching, interested at last.
Griffo’s voice finally came crackling over the radio. ‘It’s empty, Sarge!’
I didn’t need the radio to hear McGillivray’s reply. ‘Wadderye mean it’s empty? He’s there. I just saw him!’
‘Well he isn’t here now.’
‘How deep is the cave?’
‘Hard to say. Looks deep.’
‘Have you checked it out thoroughly?’
‘Pretty well.’
‘Check it out bloody well. He must be in there somewhere.’
Another anguished silence ensued.
Jojo dropped down from the rock and began walking towards the scene. I followed, slightly worried about the reception I’d get, but McGillivray only had eyes for the activities on the cliff.
The silence was shattered by an echoing gun shot, a strangled oath and the sight of two cops emerging from the cave at full tilt. They made for the ropes, but one of them missed and fell to the ground, his fall broken by the vines and trees below.
By the time we reached him, he was kneeling on the ground, face down, big arse pointing skywards. It was Griffo, battered, bruised and clutching his head as if it were about to fall off.
‘You right there, mate?’ asked Kelly.
‘Centipedes!’ muttered Griffo, a dazed look on his face as he climbed to his feet.
Jojo looked surprised for the first time since I’d met him. ‘You shot a centipede?’
‘I thought it was a snake, it was that big. Spider webs in the back of the cave were crawling with em. Walked into em. Jesus, I hate centipedes. Oh fuck!’—he ripped his helmet off, his face transformed into a quivering mass of shivers and shudders and gaping holes—‘there’s another one!’
A wicked black arthropod, its little legs flickering like strobe lights, came spiralling out of the helmet and landed on the rocks, then scuttled away.
He raised his gun, but Jojo put a hand on his arm. ‘Okay, Tiger, I don’t think it’s gonna do any harm now. Have you been bitten?’
‘Just once, I reckon. On my neck.’
I considered suggesting a tourniquet, but Jojo, frowning at me as if he read my mind, pulled a handful of leaves out of a pouch on his belt, crushed them and rubbed the resulting oily liquid into the bite. ‘Try this,’ he said.
McGillivray came up and stood over us, the now-familiar look of exasperation clouding his face.
‘Do us a favour, Jojo; go and have a look in that cave for me, will you?’
‘You think there’s any point?’
‘No, but if you do happen to come across Blakie, would you mind asking him if he’ll let us arrest him?’
Jojo shimmied up the cliff and entered the cave. Less than a minute later he was on his way back down.
‘Empty, Tom.’
‘Is there a fire escape or something? I just saw him in there.’
‘Nothing that I could see.’
‘So what are we going to do now?’ I asked McGillivray.
‘Dunno about you,’ he said wearily, checking his watch and casting a cold eye upon the surrounding hills, ‘but I’m thinking about that all-day breakfast at the Resurrection Roadhouse.’
While he assembled his troops, Jojo made his way to a low outcrop, stood there looking down at the jutting rocks and tessellated pavements of the valley floor. I came up beside him.
‘Any sign of him?’
‘Only the ones he wants us to see.’
‘Why do I suspect you’re not surprised by this shemozzle?’
He made no response, but put a hand into his shirt pocket and drew from it a small brown feather.
‘Very nice,’ I said. ‘Where’d you find it?’
‘Up the bloodwood.’
‘Feather up a tree. Unusual.’
‘It is.’ He passed it to me. ‘Take a closer look.’
‘Owl, I’d say.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Looks like it’s seen better days. Comes from a ragged old owl.’
‘Comes from a ragged old something. Do you see those tiny smudges at the top?’
‘A ragged old owl with questionable hygiene?’
‘It’s ochre. Smell it.
‘Goanna fat,’ he said when I had done so. ‘Touch of spinifex rosin at the base of the quill, too.’
‘What are you getting at?’
‘The bloodwood. I wasn’t the only one up it last night.’
I paused, stared at him. ‘Jesus. What was he doing up there?’
‘Same as me, I’d imagine.’
‘Watching me have my morning piddle?’
‘I don’t know what you got up to before I arrived, but he was watching the lot of you, for sure. It’s the best vantage point.’
‘How the hell did he know we were even here?’
‘How many ways do you want? He could have seen your tracks. I did.’
/>
‘We arrived just on nightfall.’
‘Or heard your cars.’
‘We parked a couple of kilometres away.’
‘Still a million possibilities: you could have spooked a bat, silenced a cricket. A hopping mouse could have told him, for all I know. This part of the world, it’s like an orchestra to Blakie and he’s—well, he wouldn’t think of himself as the conductor, but perhaps he’s on first violin. And if there’s a piccolo off pitch or a timpani out of time, he’ll hear it.’
I sat there for a few minutes, staring off into the distance, thinking about what he’d said and wondering about the sense of what I was doing. I remembered Lincoln’s words to me. ‘Take a little while till the country gets to know you.’ Was there an undercurrent of something similar in Jojo’s voice?
As my thoughts drifted, I found my eyes meandering across the rock face opposite, the one we’d just descended. It was fretted and fringed with hieroglyphs and scribbled shadows, a calligraphy of little dips and folds and charcoal figures. One of which suddenly looked like a face: a dark, furrowed visage topped with matted hair and a purple headband.
I blinked, and it disappeared.
A cup of tea at the Godsfather
THE DAY after my return from this ignominious shambles I got a call from the Lands Council in Alice. A lawyer by the name of Charles Harmes. He wanted to talk to me about Earl Marsh and his dodgy lease, and asked if we could meet the next afternoon.
‘No worries. How about the Godsfather?
‘The Godsfather?’
‘The café at the northern end of the main street. Sign on the front says “The Godfather’s”, but we’re more into Jesus than Brando round here.’
‘Sounds like an offer I can’t refuse. Will you be free all afternoon? I’ll explain when we get there.’
The Godfather’s was Bluebush’s attempt at inner-city café society chic. For years it had been a greasy takeaway, notorious for its camelburgers and dead white chips. The current owner, Helmut Apfelbaum, had slapped on a coat of paint and arranged a few striped umbrellas artfully out the front, but he hadn’t got around to the back yet. The itinerants he employed to peel the spuds would sit out on the back steps, smoking and yarning and chucking the skins into the long grass that had sprung up around the overflowing septic tank.
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