Fool's Gold

by Fleur McDonald

  ‘Early mornings?’

  ‘You know, three or four in the morning?’

  Ross’s face froze for a moment then cocked his head to the side. ‘Why?’

  ‘Just a question.’

  ‘You wouldn’t ask if there wasn’t a reason.’

  Dave and Spencer both looked at him steadily, not replying.

  Finally Ross looked embarrassed. ‘It was a few weeks ago now. I decided I was going to camp out, but early in the morning there was a dingo or something howling and it spooked me, so I packed up and left. Trouble was, I did it in the dark and left my GPS behind, so I had to go back for it. I reckon I was about half an hour past Oakamanda when I realised what I’d done. Had to go back and get it. Do you get many dingos out here? I swear this one was so close to my tent it could have come in.’

  Spencer let out a loud laugh. ‘They’re all around here, mate. Usually all you see of them is tracks. It’s a bit unusual to have them come so close. He must’ve thought you smelled good enough to eat!’

  ‘Glad I hightailed it then. All right, I’ll be off and I’ll be sure to let you know when I find our man. I thought I might go to the hospital and see if he was in there. See you later.’ Ross put his vehicle in gear and drove off.

  Dave glanced at Spencer and yanked open the door. ‘I’m even more sure now that our John Doe is Glen Bartlett. I don’t believe in coincidences. And it sounds like this bloke is Dee’s phantom vehicle. Nothing suspicious there.’ He got in the car and waited for Spencer to get in.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ Spencer answered as he started the car up again and followed the winding track. They didn’t say anything else until they arrived at Fractured Hill. Dave was too busy sorting the information he had in his mind. He needed it straight and clear before he started talking.

  The shack there was like the one at Tim’s place. The walls were made of tin and there were four rooms: a kitchen, two bedrooms and a laundry. The cupboards were brittle, and a thick layer of dust covered the beds and table. Instead of having the homely feel to it like Tim’s place, it was rundown and shabby.

  ‘Doesn’t look like anyone’s lived here for a while.’

  ‘Don’t be fooled,’ Spencer said. ‘It only takes one dust storm to make a place look like this. You’d think no one had lived here for thirty years and yet someone could have walked out yesterday and it’d look like this after one of those mongrel storms.’ He lifted up the sheet, which was still on the bed, and opened the door to the cupboard. Nothing.

  Dusting his hands down he said, ‘Don’t think there’s much here, though.’

  Dave wandered out the other side of the hut and saw a crumbling wooden headframe rising out of the ground.

  ‘Look at this,’ Spencer called.

  Dave looked around and saw he was being waved over to a grove of thick bushland. He jogged to Spencer and pushed his way in behind him, then pulled up quickly, eyes roving over the landscape.

  There was a camp set up inside a small clearing. It looked like someone had gone to a lot of effort to cut down trees and make a spot for a camp. But not recently…years ago. A swag was rolled up next to a ring of stones, which clearly had had a fire burning in it. An esky was off to the side and a fold-up chair sat facing the campfire.

  Dave flicked open the lid of the esky and dropped it again very quickly. ‘Ugh,’ he said. Rotten lamb chops were covered by melted ice and beer cans.

  Dave unrolled the swag and unzipped it. Although it was covered in red dirt, it was obvious the swag was very new, as was the other equipment. Ginger had said Glen Bartlett had had a car full of camping gear when he’d checked out of the pub. With any luck there’d be a GPS in amongst it all, which would have a serial number they’d be able to match to confirm whose campsite this was.

  ‘I reckon there’s got to be a hire vehicle around here somewhere, don’t you?’ Spencer said.

  ‘Totally agree. But why would he have decided to camp out in the bush when he had a perfectly good hotel to sleep in?’ Dave wondered out loud.

  ‘Another question we need to answer.’

  Dave turned and walked back to the headframe to have a look into the mine. This one had a larger mouth than he’d seen before, certainly large enough to drive a car into, but it wouldn’t be hidden. With his flashlight he searched for the bottom and saw only a rusty bucket about a metre and half down.

  ‘No car,’ he yelled back to Spencer.

  ‘That’s probably a good thing. If there was he might’ve been in it and that would’ve blown our theory. Cars at the bottom of mine shafts are a bit like bodies. Not supposed to be there.’

  Dave sniggered. ‘That’s stating the obvious!’

  They walked around a bit more, Dave going back into the humpy and opening drawers and cupboards. Everything, even the crockery and cutlery inside the cupboards, were layered with dust. In the second drawer he found some old papers and a diary. He drew them out and blew on them. He leaned against the wall, flicking through each of the fragile, yellowing pages. It told of days working the mines in unrelenting heat, of breakdowns and lack of gold. There wasn’t anything helpful there. Finally he put the diary away and looked through the other documents, finding nothing useful to his investigation.

  Spencer came into the house, puffing. ‘I really wish people would die in winter when it’s cooler. Come on, time to head back and get some search teams out here. And forensics. I doubt if Glen ever came inside here by the look of the dust. There haven’t been any dust storms recently. It’d be easy to see if he’d shifted something ’cause it would leave a mark. I’m convinced the camp must be his. We know he left the Federal Hotel with a carful of camping equipment and all this is new. Now all we gotta find is his car.’

  Chapter 19

  ‘Little Maddie has been having trouble feeding,’ Melinda said to Patti. ‘Last week I recommended Janelle apply lanoline to her nipples after feeding and make sure the baby’s latching on properly. She’s in the waiting room now—have you got anything else I should suggest?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask her to try to feed her in front of you and then you can help her get Maddie into the right position and make sure she’s latching on properly. Sometimes mums think they are, but the bub isn’t quite in the right spot.’

  ‘Oh yeah, good idea. I’ll do that.’

  ‘How’s Janelle coping otherwise? She’s very young and I don’t think she has much support at home.’

  ‘Seventeen, poor love. The father didn’t stick around and her mother has told her she’s on her own in looking after the baby. She’s still living at home, but certainly without other support from any adults. I’ll check again today but I’m sure there are some problems. I’ve had her coming in every week for the last three weeks.’

  ‘Righto, sounds like you’ve got it all under control so I’ll leave you to it.’

  Out in the waiting room, Melinda smiled and called Janelle and Maddie into her office.

  She liked her office now. After the first week she had added a few of her own touches to the room—some bright soft toys, a CD player which played nursery rhymes for the older children coming in, and a jigsaw puzzle she’d seen in the toy store. It was in the shape of a dump truck and she reasoned, this being a mining town, the toddlers and young children would relate to it.

  ‘How are you today, Janelle?’ she asked once they were settled. ‘Had a good week?’

  ‘Nah, it’s been shit. She’s still not feeding properly and I’m really sore.’

  Melinda assessed the mother and saw she had dark rings under her eyes and looked extremely tired. ‘How often are you getting up to her?’ she asked.

  ‘Probably every hour.’

  Melinda took Maddie out of the pram and walked over to the scales with her. ‘Well, let’s pop her on here and see what she’s done over the week. Is she taking a bottle?’

  Janelle shook her head and stayed where she was. ‘I can’t get her to suck a dummy or a bottle. I even put honey on her dummy to
try to get her to take it. And on my nipples. I remember Mum told me ages ago that’s what she used to do with me, but that didn’t work either. Why do they do this? I thought feeding them would be the easy part. They’re only supposed to sleep, eat and shit, aren’t they?’ Her voice broke and tears streamed down her face.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart,’ Melinda said and put one hand on her arm while holding a fussing Maddie with the other. ‘It’s not as easy as that, unfortunately. I wish it was. Have you been to see the doctor? Got her all checked out? Got yourself checked out?’

  ‘Yeah, we went last week. She was crying all the time and I didn’t know what to do. He said it was nothing to worry about. Just settling into her skin.’

  ‘Who’s your doctor?’

  Janelle named one of the local GPs and Melinda jotted it down. ‘Did he ask about you?’

  ‘Nah. Didn’t need to.’

  Melinda thought otherwise. Maybe there were indications Janelle was experiencing postnatal depression, or maybe she was just struggling with the adjustment of having a difficult baby. Either way, she needed a bit of extra help and support.

  Melinda stripped off the jumpsuit and Maddie started to scream loudly as if she were in pain.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ she cooed, but doubted that Maddie would have even heard her over the crying. ‘What’s up, little one?’ Gently, she laid her on the scales and watched as the numbers changed until they came to a stop. She frowned and took her off the scales, made sure they were on zero and checked the record book. It looked like the baby had lost two hundred grams. That couldn’t be right. Placing her back down, Melinda saw the result was the same.

  ‘Do you think you still have any milk?’

  Janelle shrugged. ‘How do you tell?’

  ‘Are your breasts firm and tight? Do you leak milk? Have you tried to express and not had anything come out?’

  Janelle glanced down at her chest. ‘They feel a bit soft and soggy to me.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll try a bottle. I’m going to grab one from the kitchen and see if I can get her to take some formula. I just want to see what her sucking action is like, okay?’

  Janelle nodded and sat down again, her hands over her face. ‘I don’t think I can do this any more.’

  ‘You can and I’ll help you,’ Melinda promised.

  She took Maddie, still crying, out into the kitchen and mixed up some of the formula they kept on hand. All the while she jiggled and talked to the baby, trying to settle her. Patti came in to see what the noise was.

  ‘Och, you’ve got an upset one there,’ she said and took over making the formula.

  ‘Yeah, she’s lost two hundred grams,’ Melinda said. ‘Like I said earlier, mum says she’s not sucking well.’

  Patti screwed the lid on and handed her the bottle. Maddie pounced on the teat and started to suck. Within a couple of minutes the bottle was empty and Melinda was staring at it in surprise.

  ‘What?’ Patti asked as she started to mix up some more.

  ‘Janelle said she couldn’t get her to suck. Not a dummy or a bottle. Looks like she knows how to do it to me.’

  ‘Sometimes babies won’t take a bottle if they can smell milk on the mother. Take this back in and get mum to try to feed and see what happens.’

  Back in the consultation room, Melinda handed Maddie to Janelle and explained what had happened. ‘So,’ she continued, ‘try with this bottle and see how you go.’

  Janelle tapped the teat on Maddie’s lips and again the baby grabbed hold of it with her lips and sucked hard.

  ‘There you go. Maybe you’re not producing enough milk for her. That happens, milk dries up and sometimes it takes us a while to realise. Sometimes the only reason we work it out is because they’re unsettled and crying all the time.’

  ‘But how come she wouldn’t take a dummy or a bottle at home?’

  ‘I wish these little cutie-pies could tell us what they wanted! Unfortunately, I’m not sure I can answer that and Maddie can’t tell you either. But she’s drinking now. I tell you what, why don’t you take this bottle home because you know she’ll suck using this teat and I’ll give you half a tin of the formula we use here. That way you can go and get the exact same from the supermarket. This is a proven formula!’ she quipped.

  ‘Thank you,’ Janelle said softly.

  Melinda saw Maddie’s eyelids start to shut and the teat popped out of her mouth as she fell asleep.

  ‘Look what you’ve just done,’ Melinda whispered delightedly to Janelle. ‘You’ve fed her a bottle and put her to sleep. Aren’t you a clever thing?’ She smiled at the young mum who, for the first time since they’d met, smiled back at her.

  Melinda left the office with a sense of satisfaction. She knew she’d made a big difference to Janelle’s world, which was why she’d become a nurse in the first place—to help people.

  Walking to her car, she wanted to skip, but restrained herself. That wasn’t becoming of a professional!

  ‘Melinda! Hey, Mel!’

  She turned and saw Kathy walking towards her.

  ‘Hi, Melinda! How’s the new job?’

  ‘Kathy, hello! I’m loving it—I can’t thank you enough for encouraging me to apply for this role. And now I’m busy during the day, I’m not as sad as I was. In fact, I’d almost say I’m beginning to settle!’ She saw the delighted look on Kathy’s face and rushed on. ‘I mean, I still have to meet people outside of work, but I’m doing it gradually, and I love working with Patti.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t she just lovely? Heart of gold. Have you got time for a coffee now?’

  Melinda hesitated, about to say no. Normally she would go straight home from work and call her parents, then her sister. They weren’t the sad phone calls from before, but she liked to hear their voices every day. Still, she could call them tomorrow.

  ‘I’d love to,’ she said.

  ‘Great. How about I meet you at the Mug? I just have to put these in the car.’ She indicated to the shopping bags she had on her arm.

  ‘Great, see you there.’ She started to unlock the car but had a thought and called across the parking lot, ‘Hey, Kathy?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You can call me Mel!’

  Chapter 20

  ‘We’ve got a match,’ Dave said, adrenalin pumping through his body. ‘Glen Bartlett and our John Doe are one and the same! I knew it!’ He waved the report that had matched the fingerprints lifted from Bartlett’s Avis forms with those taken from the body and felt the familiar thrill of energy rush through him. They were getting somewhere.

  ‘No sign of his car yet. I bet it’s in a mine somewhere and that’s why we haven’t found it. I would’ve thought if it was hidden in the bush, the vehicle would have been reported by now, or we would’ve found it. But you know what I don’t understand?’ Spencer said.

  ‘What’s that?’ Dave was standing at the whiteboard, where he’d just pinned up the photo of Bartlett and written his name and birth date underneath it.

  ‘What was he doing here? And why was he camping out rather than staying at the pub?’ He pushed his chair back and swung his feet up onto the desk. ‘More importantly, why was he murdered?’

  ‘All very good questions. I’m going to ring the police station in Ballarat and find out if he has any family we need to notify.’

  ‘Okay, you do that first and then we’ll pull in Ross Pollard and have another chat with him.’

  ‘Bartlett’s mum is still alive, but there’s no wife,’ Dave told Spencer when they got into the car ten minutes later. ‘Or children. Looks like he was on his own. The boys over there are going to do the inform. I wonder if she’ll want to come over and collect the body.’

  ‘Probably not, being elderly. God, I hate doing the informs. One time I had a lady hit me in the face and tell me I was lying. I’d had to break the news that her only daughter had been killed in a car accident on the Tonkin Highway.’ He stared straight ahead, gripping the steering wheel tightly. ‘It’s a bastard of a job. Got to
be done, but.’

  ‘The first time I ever had to do it I was telling a husband his wife had drowned at the beach. She’d been caught in a rip. He didn’t believe me until I took him to the morgue so he could identify her. Kept saying it couldn’t be her because she swam there every day and knew the sea. Knew the area. Strange, isn’t it? They always know why you’re there but sometimes the mind won’t let them accept what the heart knows.’

  They both fell into silence, thinking about the other times they’d had to tell family their loved ones had died.

  Eventually Spencer broke the silence. ‘You know what’s worse?’

  ‘I don’t think there is anything worse, is there?’

  ‘Not knowing. Seeing the grief the family have to live with when they don’t know. The son or daughter could be dead, but they might not be. If they’re not dead, why did they leave? If they’re dead, what happened to them and where is their body?’

  ‘I had a case like that once,’ Dave said, except it was the other way around: a body and no identification. ‘It’s one of those cases you can’t let go, know what I mean?’

  ‘Know exactly what you’re saying. What happened?’

  Dave sighed and looked out of the window. There was a group of kids kicking the footy on the road, but they scattered as the police car drove past.

  ‘I worked a case where a body was found. A young boy’s body. He’d been assaulted and dumped in the state forest. By the time campers came across him, foxes had eaten parts of him. He was in a bad way.’ Dave took a breath. ‘Tried everything I knew to identify him. DNA, dental records, fingerprints. We tried TV, radio, had the forensic artist come in and draw a composite picture. Never got a nibble.

  ‘This kid didn’t have a record—well, no fingerprints that matched any crimes we had on file. He’d obviously been the victim of assaults throughout his life because the X-rays showed broken bones—arms, cracked skull, that type of thing. There were no missing persons reports that matched and I never managed to ID him. He’s buried without a name, without his family knowing.’