Gunshot Road

by Adrian Hyland

  Black hole

  AS I DROVE I felt something nagging away at my consciousness. A warning light came on inside my head. Something significant had just happened back there, but I was buggered if I could figure out what it was. Something I’d seen? Whatever it was, it refused to come out of hiding. I shrugged it off.

  By the time we reached the old Gunshot Diggings it was light. I slowed down. This was where the Rabble scratched out their miserable existence. There were maybe fifty people, prospectors, drifters and other desperadoes, living out here. Many of them would recognise me. No point in drawing attention to ourselves.

  I did spot a couple of blokes up among the cluster of caravans and demountable hovels the Rabble called home: a thin man stretching and staring into the gaping hole of the day, a fat one trying to kick an excavator to death. Neither of them paid me any attention.

  The riskiest spot would be at the bore, where we rejoined the Gunshot Road. A lot of the gougers came down to top up their water and chew the fat—what little there was to be chewed in a world where the main activities were swinging a pick and staring at a mountain of rocks for specks of gold.

  I approached the stand-pipe cautiously: sure enough, there was an old Mack parked there. I knew that truck. Like a lot of other vehicles round here, it had slowly decomposed into an image of its owner: it was rusted and dusty, worn around the edges, with bits hanging off or welded on, stripped down to the bare essentials. As was the bloke on top of the tray.

  He looked up and gave me a wave.

  Damn! Geordie Formwood: eye like a hawk, mouth like a front-end loader. We’d be all over the goldfields in minutes if I didn’t shut him up.

  I pulled over, backed up.

  ‘Geordie.’

  ‘Emily Tempest! Up at first crow call!’ The chirpy Aberdonian burr, not what I wanted to hear right now. ‘What brings you out the Gunshot, this time of the day?’

  ‘Slight—er—complication in town, Geordie.’

  ‘Complication?’ He squinted at me.

  ‘Haven’t seen anything resembling a cop round here, have you?’

  The squint grew squintier. ‘Only you.’

  ‘I seem to have gone across to the other side.’

  ‘Oh. That sort of complication…’

  He nodded sympathetically: this was something he could relate to. Most of these characters have spent their lives skating along the outer limits of the law: claims were made to be jumped, unwatched fuel siphoned, miscellaneous objects liberated from owners careless enough to leave them unattended for a split second.

  He climbed down from the tray, scratched his baggy britches and his baggier behind, looked up and down the track. He lit up a ciggie and gave vent to the Formwood dawn chorus: a horrible array of snorts, hacks and general crepitation. Christ, if the smokes didn’t kill him, I might have to.

  ‘No, Em, haven’t seen a soul.’

  ‘Good on you, Geordie—and you haven’t seen me either, have you?’

  He shook his head, grinned: he knew the routine. ‘Hide nor hair.’ He peered in the window, saw Danny.

  ‘Hellooo.’

  The boy said nothing, but the way he curled into the corner was answer enough for Geordie. He turned back to me. ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Danny.’

  ‘What’s his story?’

  ‘You heard what happened to Wireless?’

  The blisters on his lips bristled. ‘Aye—fuckin jacks. No offence intended.’

  ‘None taken Geordie—like I said, I’m not with em any more.’

  ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘Nothing—but then neither had Wireless.’

  His mouth grew granite-edged. ‘Never was convinced it was him who done Doc.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  I put the car into gear.

  ‘Where you taking him, Em?’

  ‘If I told you, I’d have to kill you, mate.’

  He recoiled. ‘We wouldn’t want that.’ He slid a hand down the greasy shorts, gave a farewell rattle of the cavities. ‘Good luck, Em. Danny.’

  The boy said nothing.

  *

  I pushed on, out to where the corrugations were enough to rattle your wheel nuts off. Twenty minutes of that and we were on the western extremities of the original fields, where the road crawled round the foot of the abandoned Gunshot Mine. I pulled over, took a look around. Couldn’t see much past the encroaching hills and the turpentine scrub. Felt uneasy. I needed a vantage point.

  ‘Why we stopping?’ asked Danny.

  ‘Gonna drive up to the summit; check out the lie of the land.’

  I worked the truck up to the top of the rise, climbed onto the tray and examined the Gunshot Road: no sign of pursuit, no telltale clouds of dust, no movement other than a kestrel floating on distant thermals.

  I looked over at the pit, shuddered. I’d never liked this place. I’d come here once as a kid, heard the story from my father. It started as a conventional underground mine, and was dramatically converted into open cut when the shaft caved in on top of the dozen poor bastards working it at the time.

  The operation had closed down years ago, but a massive crater remained—along with a bullet-riddled sign saying the company was engaging in ‘world-class rehabilitation’ of the site.

  The only rehab visible thus far was the sign itself, a drooping fence and a clutch of tough little samphire shrubs that clung to the slopes.

  On impulse, I clambered onto the roof, peered into the pit. An intimidating chasm stared back at me: stern-faced ironstone walls, deeply incised, gullied and tunnelled. A dizzying, crumbling maw, eighty metres deep, five hundred across. It reminded me of the Drunks’ Camp back in Bluebush: dark, scarred. An abandoned mess we’d all rather not think about.

  I thought about Andulka’s warning that all this blasting and digging was stirring up old ghosts. Had a sense of what he was getting at.

  Way down on the mine floor, a murder of crows picked at something, maybe a wallaby that had gone too close to the edge.

  I turned around, studied the plains ahead. There was a handful of abandoned buildings up there: the old Gunshot headworks, a dilapidated office, a workshop, the rock-crushing battery, silent these thirty years now.

  Beyond that, scrubby desert.

  Once again, all seemed clear.

  I made to jump back down, then paused. Was that a flash of light from a mulga copse beyond the buildings? I squinted, shielded my eyes. Wished I’d brought the binoculars. There it was again: a glimmer among the green-grey leaves.

  A windscreen, reflecting the morning sun? Somebody with their own binoculars waiting in ambush? Maybe just a bit of scrap metal from the old days, some long-abandoned dolly pot or donkey, a collapsed headframe, a broken bottle.

  No option. I had to go and check it out; west was the only road open to us. They’d be coming from the east, and sooner rather than later. I climbed down and spoke to Danny.

  ‘I’m going to scout up ahead.’

  ‘What’s there?’

  ‘Probably nothing, but I want to be sure. Best if you wait here.’

  He wasn’t happy with that, but I didn’t give him a choice. I’d lose any chance of stealth if I went out there with the boy stumbling along beside me, jumping at shadows.

  There was a honeysuckle grevillea alongside the car. I dragged off a long orange bloom, handed it over to him.

  ‘Try this.’

  He put it to his mouth, seemed to find a fleeting relief in the trickle of nectar that ran across his lower lip and onto his chin.

  ‘You be careful,’ he whispered, raking my heart with a long, silent plea.

  I ruffled his hair and set off.

  Crouching low, using whatever cover was available, I worked my way around to the south side of the track. I moved through thick scrub, tall grass, past the abandoned mine works I’d seen from the rise.

  The tallest of the buildings was the ore-crushing battery, a corrugated iron tower stretching eighty feet into the
air. Even from a hundred yards away, I could hear a patter of eerie creaking sounds emanating from its upper reaches, metal sheets and beams expanding in the morning sun.

  I paused. The battery looked bloody dangerous, like it was ready to collapse. Somebody ought to demolish it.

  South of the mulga was a rocky rise which offered the prospect of both vantage and concealment. I cut across, climbed its southern slope, wormed my way between two sandstone boulders at the summit, looked down onto the copse.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ I muttered to myself. There was a car in there, all right—a cop car.

  They’d given up on roadblocks in favour of a more subtle approach.

  ‘Morning Emily.’ The voice was smug, familiar—and right in my ear. I whirled round, dropped my face into the dirt, cursing myself for an incompetent idiot.

  He was leaning against the boulder to my right, his arms crossed, his blue eyes coldly triumphant.

  Bruce Cockburn.

  Banging heads and brick walls

  I NODDED AT THE pistol on his belt. Snarled, ‘You prepared to use that?’

  ‘Prepared to do whatever the circumstances call for.’

  ‘They’ll call for that if you expect me to hand Danny over.’

  ‘He’s absconded from lawful custody.’

  ‘He oughter be in hospital, not jail.’ I climbed to my feet, shook off dust, tried to shake off some of the anger I could feel rising inside. ‘How the hell’d you find me, anyway?’

  ‘Getting used to you and your mysterious ways, Emily.’

  ‘I’m supposed to be impressed?’

  ‘Wouldn’t expect anything short of the Second Coming to impress you, but I’d be grateful if you’d listen to me.’

  ‘Listen!’ I fixed him with a glistening stare. ‘I’ve been listening to you for the past month. Listened while you ponced around the country I grew up in like you owned it. Listened while you sent Wireless to his death. Listened while you threw Danny into the same hole. I think I’m done listening to you. Sir.’

  ‘You were right.’

  I don’t know if my jaw actually dropped, but I damn near checked next to my feet. ‘What?’

  ‘I spoke to my boy.’

  ‘That’s an improvement.’

  He hesitated. Removed his shades.

  ‘The incident at the sports ground wasn’t as…straightforward as we’d been led to believe.’

  ‘Nothing is. What’d he tell you?’

  ‘He says your young friend—Danny—yes, he did stab the white bloke. But apparently the feller attacked him first. No apparent provocation. Jarrod says the boy was just walking past, feller came out of the shadow of the grandstand. The father was coming along behind, tried to help—it was only when he’d been wounded that the boy retaliated. Seems it was with the attacker’s own knife.’

  I kicked at the ground with a boot, trying to work this latest piece into the jigsaw.

  ‘Then it was self-defence?’

  ‘Looks like it. Doesn’t quite tally with some other accounts we’ve been given, but it sure as hell complicates things.’

  ‘How’s Bandy?’

  ‘The father? Still holding his own I think.’

  ‘Well that’s something.’

  He adjusted his belt, cast a calculating eye on me. ‘So where does that leave us, Emily?’

  ‘Depends.’

  ‘On what?’

  ‘On what’s going to happen to Danny.’

  ‘On the evidence so far, nothing will happen to him. There’ll be an inquest, but unless something else comes along he’ll go free. Mind you,’ the sardonic smile, ‘you’ll be a different matter.’

  I’d been wondering about that. Aiding and abetting an escape from custody: what was the going rate for that? Anybody’s guess. Making Cockburn look like a fool? Probably worse. And they still hadn’t told me what sort of shit I was in over killing Paisley.

  Right now, though, that was the least of my concerns. If Danny wasn’t bound for the slammer I could take him back, get him some professional help.

  There were other things I needed to know.

  ‘Did you find out who the dead feller was?’

  ‘We were working on that when I heard that our prisoner had escaped. Seems he worked for the mines.’

  ‘A miner?’

  ‘Security.’

  I felt the discomfort ripple across my skin. ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Wellman.’

  ‘Great name for a dead bloke.’

  ‘Couple of the constables have had dealings with him—safety reviews, theft reduction strategies, weapon storage inspection, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Wonder what he was…’

  ‘Suspect we’ll find he was related to one of the boys in the fight…’

  ‘You’re related to one of the boys in the fight.’

  ‘…or just some poor bloody resident who’d had enough.’

  I regarded him suspiciously. ‘Enough what?’

  He shrugged. ‘Enough of Bluebush.’

  ‘Enough of the blacks, you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  Talk about banging heads and brick walls.

  ‘Cockburn, you really don’t get it, do you?’

  ‘Get what?’

  I raised my hand to brush away a fly, wished I could brush away this knuckle-head as easily.

  ‘These aren’t isolated events.’

  ‘I told you we’d investigate.’

  ‘Great investigation it’s going to be if you start with the assumption that a security man trying to kill Danny was just some good old boy taking the law into his own hands. Or that Doc was a silly old coot who got himself hammered in a drunken brawl.’

  Cockburn gave a reasonable impression of a budgie straining to pass an emu egg. ‘Not your conspiracy theories again?’

  ‘There’s too many unexplained things going on: too many deaths, too much mystery.’

  ‘Deaths? Mystery? Course there are—that’s what this job’s all about. People die all the time. They’re all mysteries until we figure out what happened. And what’s usually happened is that somebody’s said the wrong thing to a feller who’s had a skinful, or caught one of his mates doing the missus.

  ‘Godsakes Emily,’ he was almost pleading, ‘look at it rationally: you’ve got a couple of people killed in drunken fights a hundred miles apart. Nothing at all to say they’re connected.’

  ‘That’s a connection in itself: whoever’s behind it’s using the same technique.’

  ‘Technique?’

  ‘Trying to disguise their actions; they’ve got something to hide. There’s a pattern here.’

  ‘You keep saying that.’ He folded his arms and sighed deeply. ‘But you never give me any proof.’

  Down on the sand a meat ant was struggling to lug a butterfly ten times its weight. I knew how it felt.

  ‘It’s not the sort of thing you can prove—not by whitefeller standards, anyway, not yet. But sometimes you just have to trust your gut instincts. Even an instinct’s got a basis in fact; it’s just more subtle.’

  ‘Subtle! First day I arrived in this damn place, one of your fellow countrymen bashed a mate to death because he’d flogged his roast chicken. That subtle enough for you?’

  ‘Probably is, in the long run. Reasons for everything…’

  He snorted, pushed back his cap. ‘My god, you’re an exasperating woman! You make everything so complicated.’

  ‘That’s because everything is so complicated!’

  Somewhere a bird called. The minatory purr of a peaceful dove. I looked around, suspicious. Nothing to be seen, but my discomfort increased. I turned back to Cockburn.

  ‘You can’t see the change in something if you don’t know what it looked like in the first place, but if you stay out here long enough you’ll understand. I’m only a beginner myself, but I’ve been round long enough to know that things interconnect—deaths and dreams, watercourses, tracks and plants. Everything. And if something’s
out of place…’

  ‘Emily,’ he interrupted. He’d been shifting restlessly while I spoke, scratching his head. Ignorant bastard might as well have looked at his watch. ‘I honestly regret what happened to you, and I’m sure the prosecutor will take it into account when they’re deciding whether to charge you. But if you blunder about the place seeing conspiracies wherever you look, you’re going to go out of your frigging mind. I’ve been in the force twenty years and believe me: if it’s a choice between cock-up or conspiracy? Go for the cock-up every time.’

  What was the point? ‘All right Cockburn, I give up.’ I stepped away, clutched my elbows in frustration. ‘Let’s just quit while we’re behind.’

  ‘So you’ll come back?’

  ‘Do I have a choice?’

  ‘No, but I’d like to keep the trouble to a minimum. You’re up to your neck in it already. Where’s our young friend?’

  I pursed my lips, pointed with them. ‘Back at the open cut.’

  ‘We’ll drive.’

  ‘Rather walk.’

  He shaded his eyes, looked out over the plains, through the shimmering scrub. The cicada scream rose and fell away, the rocks radiated heat. The sand was like burning snow. Cockburn had—unusually—a sheen of perspiration across his brow.

  ‘Scorchin out there, Emily.’

  ‘Don’t worry, boss—I’m not going to bugger off again.’

  ‘We need to get back—half the station’s out looking for you.’

  I shrugged. ‘Okay, but drop me off early. I want to tell Danny what’s going on; he’ll jump out of his skin, sees you coming at him in a cop car.’

  We walked down to his vehicle in a hot sweat and a cold silence, climbed aboard, drove back towards the mine. I stared at the floor, brooding heavily, wondering whether I’d done the right thing.

  Danny was traumatised, but at least he wasn’t about to be thrown back into the slammer. That much I could believe; Cockburn might have the imagination of a termite mound but he was, I sensed, a man of his word.

  With a bit of peace and some treatment the boy would be okay. Then once we got things cleared up in town, Danny could make a more easy-going trip back to Stonehouse. Chances were I’d be otherwise engaged. Ultimately, I knew, that would be the best medicine: give the country and its healers—Windmill, Meg, even the wandering ghost of Andulka—time to weave their magic.