With nothing to do, his mind kept returning to the conversation with Lorraine. Butcher had her in his control, that was clear. He remembered his own words to her the night before, about taking the bag to the Karratha police. She’d have passed the information straight on, he was certain of that. The thought of what Butcher would do about it made him tremble. If he’d been a threat to the big cop before, then he was doubly so now. The fragile collection of bones, packed carefully in the bag that he was now using as a pillow, was all the evidence that existed to connect Butcher with the events of the past. It was ironic when he thought about it, that he should have brought the girl back here to the boat for protection. The very thing that had been the source of so much pain and suffering for her was probably going to save his life and let the truth about her fate finally emerge from the sands of the desert.
He’d been lost in thought for a long time when a couple of things snapped him out of his daydreaming. One was the sky. The dark cloud, which earlier had been nothing more than a smear in the distance, was moving closer and closer. It was still a long way off, but much larger, now covering a third of the sky. Brief flashes of lightning illuminated the storm from within itself and some minutes later the sound of far-off thunder rumbled across the still water. It made the old timbers of the boat tremble. As he watched and listened, fascinated by the beauty and power of the approaching clouds, something far more frightening grabbed his attention.
The police truck was speeding up the beach towards him.
Crouched in the bottom of the boat, the sensation of déjà vu was incredible. But Cameron had been there that time and now he was alone. Almost alone – on the floor beside him lay the backpack. He could feel the girl’s presence as though she were actually there in the boat with him, sharing his fear. Since they’d left the mine, her voice no longer rang in his mind. She wasn’t calling to him any more, but her presence was just as strong, perhaps even more so than before. If he hadn’t been so scared, he’d have found it strangely comforting.
He heard the heavy footsteps. It might have been Jamie’s imagination, but inside the boat it seemed to grow darker.
‘Riley!’
Butcher’s shout ripped through the air like a gunshot.
‘I know you’re in there, son. There’s fresh tracks all over the place.’
Saying nothing, Jamie slipped the straps of the pack over his arms, settling the weight of the bag silently onto his back. Ready for sudden movement. Ready to run.
‘We both know you’re not getting out.’
What were his chances of making a run for it? Butcher was overweight, and even though he was quick across a short distance he’d tire pretty fast. Then Jamie remembered the gun in its holster on Butcher’s hip. He couldn’t outrun a bullet.
‘You might as well just come out and get it over with.’
‘Why don’t you come in and get me, fatty?’ The shout escaped Jamie’s lips almost involuntarily. The question hung unanswered in the still air.
After a minute or two of waiting Jamie could take it no longer. He had to see what was happening. Butcher knew that he was in there, and so freed of the need for silence he scrambled up to the next deck, where he could at least look out through the holes in the walls.
There should have been more light coming in to the upper deck, but now it was almost as dark on this level of the boat as it had been in the bilges. Moving aft, he peered straight up through the main hatchway. The clouds now filled the sky, rolling in from the ocean and totally blocking the sun. They boiled into one another, and the occasional flashes of lightning were much brighter than before, illuminating the inside of the boat in brief strobes. The grumble of thunder was also closer, louder, more persistent.
Edging carefully towards the bow, Jamie dropped his eye to a hole. Over at the truck Butcher had his back to Jamie as he rummaged in the small cargo space immediately behind the cab. Eventually he hauled out a large steel jerry can. It fell heavily onto the sand with a metallic clang. As he turned back, Jamie instinctively ducked again, not wanting to risk being seen, even through the tiny peephole. The dry and rotten planks would provide little protection from Butcher’s gun.
The footsteps crunched towards him again. There was a splashing noise, more steps, and the acrid scent of petrol drifted through the still air. Jamie froze.
‘Big storm coming.’ Butcher stood a little away now, shouting again. ‘I’d say it’s the beginning of the wet. Gonna be a lot of lightning hitting this part of the coast in the next little while. Probably start a few fires around the place.’ The threat was clear. Crouching again at his peephole, fear gripped Jamie’s belly with icy fingers.
‘You throw that bag out here now and I might just be able to persuade the courts to go a little easy on you. Make sure you only get a couple of years, eh?’
It was an obvious lie. There was no way that Butcher could afford to let Jamie escape. The fumes from the petrol were doing strange things to him. His head spun. He stalled for time, desperately hoping for an idea.
‘What if I stay in here?’
Butcher didn’t answer, at least not with words. A quick flick of his wrist, and the flame of a zippo lighter flared in his right hand.
‘I’m gonna count down from five, son. I get to zero and you’re toast. Five.’
‘Shit!’ Jamie scanned the inside of the boat, searching for an escape, a means to protect himself. There was nothing.
‘Four.’
‘You’re a dickhead, Butcher. Cameron knows all about it. He’ll call the cops if I don’t show up.’
‘Three.’ Another quick glance through the peephole revealed Butcher bending ponderously towards a dark trail in the sand at his feet.
‘Two.’
Without worrying about the strength of the deck, Jamie scurried towards the hatchway, ready to run when the flames engulfed the boat.
‘One.’
With an awful splintering noise the floor beneath him cracked and fell apart, and Jamie plunged back into the darkness of the bilge. On the way down his head struck something. It was just a glancing blow, but white lights exploded behind his eyes and he fell with a sickening crunch onto the sand in the bottom of the boat.
From outside there was silence. Through the dizziness and light-headedness, Jamie was aware of a soft ‘Whump!’ and seconds later smoke began to fill the tiny, dark space.
Assisted by the petrol it took only an instant for the fire to take hold of the dry, sun-bleached timbers. The bow erupted into a column of flames and thick black smoke poured into the dark clouds. Butcher took a few steps back, a half smile on his face as he felt the fingers of heat radiate out towards him.
Inside, Jamie was drowning. A sea of dark, acrid smoke rolled over him, choking his breathing as he tried desperately to scramble back up to the top deck. He was much deeper in the hold than he had been earlier, and the roof was further away, beyond his reach. The fumes clouded his thoughts, making it difficult to get his body to respond. He tried to move forward, towards the front of the boat, where the upper deck was closer and he’d be able to climb through, but no sooner had he moved a couple of steps than he was driven back by the intense heat. He retreated deeper into the darkness towards the stern.
Staggering backwards he tripped against the remains of an engine half buried in the sand. He started to fall and braced himself for the impact.
The pain never came. Instead Jamie was being supported, his weight held up by something. He tried to see what had saved him, but the smoke, the darkness and his spinning head made whatever it was impossible to discern. Groping around, his hands grasped a bit of wood, splintered and old like the rest of the boat. And then another. Two poles, reaching up into the smoky darkness, horizontal rungs between them. A ladder. An escape.
The fire was roaring now, the sound filling Jamie’s ears. As he placed his foot where he thought the fi
rst rung should be he smelt singed hair – it was his.
His body was working on autopilot. The fifth rung splintered and fell apart beneath him and he instinctively grabbed for the bulkhead above, arresting his fall just in time.
The five-second climb to the first deck took forever. Hauling himself through the hatchway he looked around desparately for an escape route. A couple of feet away, the stern hatch was the main exit for the smoke, which boiled along the roof, right above his head. A quick glance over his shoulder revealed a wall of angry, orange flame eating quickly towards him. He leapt for the hatchway and, feeling as though he was moving in slow motion, hauled himself into the open air.
He lay on the deck looking upwards, a tower of smoke racing into the sky above him. Flashes of lightning were cracking down and the roaring of the flames mixed with the crash of thunder. He crawled towards the safety rail around the edge of the boat, used it to help drag himself to his feet, and without checking the distance of the fall, he vaulted off the boat.
A burst of pain exploded in his ankle when he hit the hard dirt of the beach. He fell, rolled for a second or two, then tried to stand. Halfway to his feet his leg collapsed beneath him. The boat burned fiercely, the heat from the flames searing his skin, reminding him of the merciless desert sun. Painfully, he half crawled, half dragged himself across the ground, not worrying in which direction he headed as long as it took him away from the flames.
He closed his eyes in pain. The sand scraped at his singed arms and legs, but with each movement the radiated heat grew less and less. When he came up against something solid he stopped and looked up to see what it was. Over him stood Butcher, gun drawn.
‘You’re a tough little bugger. I’ll give you that.’
His thumb drew back the hammer. Even over the roar of the fire and the crash of the thunder Jamie heard the soft click of the bullet rolling into place in the firing chamber. He closed his eyes.
A shot rang out. The sound blended with the thunder.
thirty-two
There was no pain – no blinding flash.
Jamie lay on the sand. Waiting. But there was no searing burst of agony. No bullet tearing through his flesh.
He opened his eyes. Butcher still stood above him, but his right hand no longer held the gun. Instead his arm hung by his side, limp and still. His left hand slowly reached across and felt his right shoulder, probing at a tiny hole in the fabric of his uniform. He pulled his hand away with a jerk; a smear of blood stained his fingers. He stared at them with a puzzled expression, holding them right up in front of his face. Then his eyes rolled back in his head, and with a sickening thump he fell to the sand, unconscious.
Three figures stepped out from behind the protection of the four-wheel drive. The first was Cameron. He came straight towards Jamie, with Archie following a couple of steps behind. Finally, Constable Robb stepped into the open, holstering his service revolver as he did so.
‘You okay?’ Cameron crouched beside Jamie.
‘I’ll live. What—’
Before he could finish his question, Archie interrupted.
‘Time enough for questions later.’
The two of them helped Jamie to his feet. Robb was bending over the prone shape of Butcher. Archie looked at him.
‘Dead?’
Robb shook his head.
‘Nah, straight through his shoulder. It’s clean. He’ll live.’
Cameron and Archie propped Jamie on the bonnet of the truck, then Archie found the first-aid kit and went to attend to Butcher. Robb spoke to someone on the radio, then swung himself up onto the bullbar, alongside Cameron and Jamie.
They sat in silence watching the fire. The boat was now engulfed, and flames leaped into the black sky like prisoners escaping confinement. The dark smoke drifted inland towards the desert.
It was a long time before the fire consumed the last of the dry wood. An ambulance arrived and there was some commotion at the back of the car as Butcher returned to consciousness and found himself under arrest. Eventually the ambulance officer sedated him so they could load him onto a stretcher.
‘How did you know?’
‘Where else would you have gone?’ Cameron grinned at him. ‘Old habits die hard, eh?’
‘Yeah.’
After one of the ambulance officers had strapped Jamie’s ankle and made sure he wasn’t seriously hurt, Archie came across.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘I’ve been better, but I’ll live.’
‘Good.’
Robb spoke.
‘The detective inspector’s coming across from Karratha. He’ll meet us back in town.’
He patted his pockets as if searching for something. It was the first time Jamie had seen Robb up close without sunglasses on and he saw the same intense blue eyes as Archie’s. Finding what he was looking for, Robb pulled out a packet of cigarettes and lit one.
‘When you gonna give up those poison sticks?’ Archie asked, only half joking.
‘When I feel like it.’
‘How about now?’
Robb looked at the old man, then at the packet in his hand.
‘Fair enough.’
He took a last draw on the cigarette and flicked it towards the burning boat. It arced gracefully though the air and then blended with the larger fire. He crushed the packet and threw it in as well.
Nothing more was said. The four of them watched the burning boat slowly fall in upon itself as the flames ate through the internal timbers. Eventually, the last of the fuel consumed, the fire began to die, until the boat was nothing more than a pile of glowing embers and a couple of smoldering tyres.
From above them an enormous clap of thunder broke the stillness, and the first drops of rain fell. Fat, warm beads of water, plopping onto the sand and raising tiny steam devils in the embers.
thirty-three
‘Jamie, I’m Detective Inspector Swan, and this is Detective Mueller. You up to answering a few questions?’
The two cops slouched in chairs on the other side of the desk. They looked pretty tired, but then they’d spent the last week trying to unravel the events that had culminated at the boat.
‘Yeah.’
‘All right then. How about you tell us everything that happened, in your own words.’
‘From when?’
‘From when you arrived.’
‘In Port Barren?’
‘Please.’
It took nearly an hour for Jamie to tell his story. He left a few things out. When the detectives wanted to know how they’d got back into town from the national park, all he told them was that they’d hitched a ride. He could tell that they didn’t believe him, but they let it pass. And he said nothing about Butcher’s hold over Lorraine.
It was Detective Mueller who steered the conversation towards the social worker.
‘Have you heard anything from Lorraine?’
Everyone knew that Lorraine had vanished from Port Barren on the day of the boat fire.
‘Nah. Have you?’
Jamie caught the look that passed between the two men. ‘What?’
They obviously knew something. Swan, the inspector took over.
‘They found her car late last night. She wasn’t in it.’
‘Where?’
‘Overturned in a creek, about three hundred kilometres south of Karratha. It looks like she’d tried to get across a floodway somewhere upstream but didn’t make it.’
Jamie could feel the eyes of the two cops on him, watching for his reaction.
‘They reckon she’s alive?’
Swan shrugged. ‘No idea. I don’t like her chances though. When these desert creeks are in flood, they’re pretty much unstoppable. She was stupid to even try to get across, especially in that crappy little
car of hers. She probably stalled halfway, tried to get out, and got swept away.’
‘Will they find her body?’
Mueller answered. ‘Doubt it. Desert’s a pretty big place.’
Swan leaned across the table.
‘We’re still trying to work out why she ran like that. You sure you’ve got no idea?’
Memories of his last meeting with Lorraine, here in this very office, flickered through Jamie’s mind. He also remembered the touch of her hand that night at Archie’s.
‘Nah. No idea. Sorry.’
‘Thanks Jamie. We’ll need to speak to you again before we’re finished here. So will a few others.’
‘Others?’
‘There’s some internal affairs people coming up from the city to investigate Sergeant Butcher.’
‘I’m not goin’ anywhere.’
The younger detective grinned. Jamie guessed they’d read his file.
‘We’ll be in touch.’ The inspector stood and held out his hand. Jamie shook it awkwardly and turned for the door, but Swan hadn’t quite finished.
‘Oh, yeah. There’s just one more thing.’
Jamie stopped.
‘I nearly forgot. The forensic people wanted me to ask you – are you certain you picked up all of the remains of the girl out at the mine site?’
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s just that there’s a few bits and pieces missing. Most of it can be explained by scavengers, but apparently one of the femur bones from her leg is also gone, and they’re pretty big.’
Jamie shrugged. ‘Did they look back at Flaherety’s Curse?’
‘I looked myself yesterday when we flew out there. Couldn’t see a thing.’
‘Sorry. Can’t help you then.’
‘That’s okay. Just thought I’d ask.’
As Jamie left, the Detective Inspector’s eyes followed him thoughtfully.
Robb was waiting out on the front verandah.
‘Want a ride?’
It was only a couple of minutes walk, but his strapped-up ankle still caused him a bit of pain. Besides, it hadn’t stopped raining for a week.
A New Kind of Dreaming Page 18
