True Stars

by Kidman, Fiona

  He relented. ‘About the information I have.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Your Mr Daniels was very helpful.’ He smiled, the first time that afternoon.

  When she had gone to talk to his colleagues, Campbell sat and looked at his desk for a long time, mentally packing it up, for good and all. Not much longer. He anticipated the long night of questions that lay ahead, with O’Meara in the hot seat. It saddened him that the officers at the station would be so divided by what was about to happen.

  The worst, and most likely outcome that he could foresee, was that it would all be to no avail. O’Meara’s story was sure to hold.

  Jason walked quietly and steadily in the morning light, only the ungainly beat of his crippled leg setting him apart. Over and over in his head, like a poem, he had rehearsed what he would say to Rose Kendall.

  ‘I took your message at the camp last night,’ he would say, but this time I didn’t pass it on to Larissa.

  ‘Why you motherfucker’ — she wouldn’t say, but would certainly think — ‘why, fancy, how come you got a message that was meant for Larissa and didn’t give it to her?’

  ‘Because she would tell Gary or he would find out somehow from her that you were in town because she can’t hide anything from him, that girl, he reads into her soul because he is a devil and has taken it over, I know because I have seen, and because my mother who is all-knowing has told me and there is little hope that she will be saved, I am giving up. But I have come to save you, for, and on account of one kind word from you, and because you too would like to save Larissa if it is not too late, I think she would like to be saved but she cannot be, she is in thrall to the devil, to the beast in him.’

  ‘This is strong stuff, Jason,’ she would say. ‘Are you sure that you know what you are talking about?’

  ‘There is little time,’ he would say. ‘It is best that you know that Gary and O’Meara are out to get you some way or another because O’Meara is a devil too and he is obsessed, and there is no way that obsession like his can be stamped out, only it is him that must be stamped out. I know these things, and I will tell you them because I do not wish you harm, Mrs Kendall.’

  He knocked on the door, and as he waited he felt a quivering in the air, as if the trees down Cedarwood Grove were watching him.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the man who answered his knock.

  ‘I’ve come to see Mrs Kendall.’

  ‘You’ll have to give me your name.’

  ‘Jason. Tell her, please, it’s Jason from the camp.’

  He saw her in the stairwell then, smaller than he remembered, although her bottom bulged a little in her jeans, like most women’s, and her Indian cotton shirt was tied in too tight to her waist. Her face was stripped of make-up, and shiny, as if she had just washed. He knew he had been right to come.

  At the same moment, at the other end of the driveway up which he had just walked, he saw O’Meara. Straight away he knew it was a trap, and he recognised the man at the door, one of the new young police constables that had come to town, a man called Tippet.

  He turned. O’Meara stood impassive at the gate.

  ‘What is it, Jason?’ called Rose Kendall, advancing towards him.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’ He shouted it as loud as he could, as if that would somehow convey all that was in his head.

  ‘Come inside then. Constable, it’s all right, Jason can come in.’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t tell you now.’ O‘Meara walked towards him. ‘You’re being followed by devils.’

  And then he was off, racing across the paving stones, his artificial leg making a queer pounding against them, and down through the bushes. He knew this territory better than O’Meara, and he doubted that he would pursue him at this moment, with the woman watching.

  He took the back way out of Cedarwood Grove, doubled back, and emerged near the end without actually having traversed it. At the end of the road he looked back over his shoulder and saw the police car nudging out of the Kendalls’ driveway. He was almost out of places to run: too late, he realised he should have laid low out the back of the greenhouse where he and Gary had done business.

  There were fences that an able-bodied man might scale, but he could not. Just when it seemed that O’Meara must surely catch up with him, the grey snout of the Studebaker appeared round the corner.

  ‘Get in, fuckwit.’ Gary held the door open, slowing down to a crawl, so that Jason had to throw himself across the passenger seat. Gary picked up speed and they hurtled away towards the camp, the door swinging wildly.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Where do you think?’ Gary turned the car into the camp. Herbert’s face appeared at the toll-gate, incensed at their speed.

  ‘Slow down,’ screamed Jason, ‘we’re here now.’

  ‘We’re not staying.’

  Gary had switched the motor off and was already running towards the caravan. ‘We gotta get armed.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere with you and a gun.’

  ‘Then I’ll blow your fucking brains out now.’

  Gary flicked his leg sideways, tripping Jason, and while he struggled to his feet again, Gary vanished inside and reappeared with the shotgun. Behind him stood Larissa.

  ‘Get in the car.’ Gary motioned to Jason.

  ‘We haven’t done anything.’

  ‘We done plenty.’

  ‘You gotta tell me.’

  ‘I’ll tell you in the car.’

  ‘Larissa.’

  Gary grabbed her arm as she moved forward, twisting it behind her back. ‘You stay put. You caused us enough trouble. You’re in for it when I get back.’

  ‘I won’t be here.’ She raised her voice defiantly as Gary, pointing the gun at Jason, moved back towards the car.

  Jason saw that her hair was blue again today, and so were her fingernails. Her face was pointed and pale. He tried to say, I love you, but nothing would come out.

  Herbert stood guard at the entrance to the camp.

  ‘Get in.’ Gary prodded Jason with the barrel.

  Jason found his voice. ‘Go, Larissa,’ he called. ‘Be sure to go.’

  Gary aimed the car at Herbert who fell sideways in a heap as the Studebaker ripped past within inches of him.

  ‘Promise, Larissa,’ Jason screamed out the window, praying she could hear him. Behind her, his mother pottered through the line of caravans planting another plastic bottle of water by a picket fence. Poppy’s parrots tossed brightly backwards and forwards on their perches, felt wings glowing; then the camp was behind them and they were gunning down the road.

  ‘O’Meara’s after us.’ Gary’s voice was edgy with hysteria.

  ‘You’re nuts, we’ve done nothing.’ ‘Campbell’s got evidence on all of us. They told O’Meara.’

  ‘They’re having him on.’ It didn’t matter whether it was true or not, he wanted to live.

  ‘He’s scared shitless we’ll give evidence against him.’

  ‘That’s dumb. He should just keep his mouth shut.’

  ‘Yeah? That’s what we were gunna do, arsehole. What were you doing grassing round Mother Kendall?

  ‘How d’they know about him? Slow down for Chrissake.’

  The car slewed on two wheels, righted itself, and careered on up through Blake Pass.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, I tell you, they’ve got evidence.’

  ‘Tell him we’ll take the rap.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ The gun lay across Gary’s knees, steadied as they tore round more corners by the flat of his hand curved down from the steering wheel. ‘So you’ll do time and take me with you?’

  ‘I don’t wanna be dead.’ Life suddenly appeared amazingly sweet to Jason.

  ‘Nah, you won’t die, not if you stick with me.’

  ‘They’ll bring guns after us. Herbert saw you take that thing.’

  ‘Shit man, O’Meara’s already out with a gun.’

  ‘They wouldn’t give him one.’
>
  ‘Not theirs. His.’

  They had passed the Blake Block and hills lay before them, and the bush reserve. ‘Just let me out,’ Jason pleaded. It felt like his last chance.

  Gary looked at the bush and the shining trees that stretched before them. ‘I need you, bro. I need someone to show me the way.’

  Lola stood in the kitchen, as if drying her hands on a tea-towel, but by her stillness Campbell knew she was listening.

  He walked out to the car where Max Tippet waited with the engine idling.

  ‘All of us?’ Campbell asked him stupidly. It was so long since he had done it. The morning rippled before him and bellied out. He could smell his own fear. When he was younger and it had happened, he had thought how much alike hunter and hunted must feel.

  Lola had followed him to the car, untying her new flowered apron as she walked unsteadily towards her husband.

  ‘Is it an arms call-out?’

  ‘Go back inside. Go and get ready for work, dear.’

  ‘Tell me. Jeff, please. Don’t go.’

  ‘It’s nothing, it’ll be over soon.’

  ‘Sweet soul of Jesus,’ she said and walked back inside.

  When he had gone she wanted to cry out in a great long holler like she had seen people do in the movies. Only it felt for real. She opened her mouth and tried it, but only a little squeak came out and she felt silly and closed it again.

  Outside there was a commotion. It was the Kendall woman running up to the house, calling out all the way for Jeff.

  ‘He’s gone,’ she said, opening the door to Rose. ‘Jeffrey’s gone.’

  ‘I know. They told me he was going. I’ve got to catch them. Jason wanted to tell me something.’

  ‘Looks like they know all about that.’

  ‘But he didn’t get a chance. He might speak to me, you see. Which way did they go?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me.’

  ‘You don’t understand. Larissa might be with them. I have to go.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘You know everything.’ Rose flung the words at her.

  Lola looked at her, caught. Even in this moment of her own distress, she knew when she was cornered. God knows what harmless little bit of gossip this woman had had passed on to her that might be turned against her. She remembered with embarrassment how freely she had talked to Rose Kendall’s friend, Toni. Not that that made much difference now. But one never knew.

  ‘They were going up Blake Pass,’ she said.

  As Rose got back into Nick’s car, prised from him just minutes before, Lola called after her, ‘Look what you’ve done to us. See what you’ve made of it. He’s due to retire soon.’

  The terrain was causing Jason difficulty. He breathed in short, laboured gasps. Gary urged him on. Jason knew this territory. He had boasted how he used to trail ride in the firebreaks when he was a kid. The one thing that was good and beautiful, he had told them one night under the stars. Hurling himself across cliff faces on those little machines that had led on to the big bikes. You got to know where every ridge and dip was, because if you didn’t you were a gonner. Those hills, he had often said, looking at them with longing. And Larissa had got round to looking at them too, he’d noticed. Now he and Gary were at large amongst them, and Jason could not keep up.

  ‘We ought to split, man,’ he said.

  ‘No way, you’re staying with me.’

  They paused for breath below a ridge. ‘I won’t grass, I’ll tell them it was me that done it all, Gary.’

  ‘Too late, mate. They know you got things on your chest.’

  ‘We weren’t that bad. We wouldn’t do much time.’

  ‘Armed robbery, breaking and entry. You gotta be joking.’

  ‘All right, I’ll tell ‘em I did the lot.’

  ‘I should shoot you, you know. Like a bloody dog. That’s what you’re worth.’

  Jason stiffened. ‘Look.’

  Gary’s eyes followed his down the ridge to an almost imperceptible movement in the trees.

  ‘O’Meara,’ said Jason. ‘Him, too.’

  ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘My leg’s hurting.’

  ‘Move.’

  Then they were on the run again, only now the native bush merged into low scrub, where fires had passed. At the top of the ridge, Jason flipped himself on his side, plunged at the firebreak and began rolling down it, protecting the skin on his face with his arms, but his hands getting mangled by the harsh earth and the protruding stumps as he went. A moment later Gary followed him, sliding on his backside so that he could hold the gun upright. He emitted high yelping screams as he hit stones and thorns. Further down the hill Jason rolled away off the break.

  ‘Where are we heading?’ Gary demanded.

  They rested a moment while Jason got his breath back. They were almost unrecognisable to each other, covered with dirt and blood.

  ‘The tip.’

  ‘The fucking tip. There’s hundreds of bloody people there.’

  ‘That’s right. We can pick up another car there, nobody takes their keys out while they dump rubbish.’

  Gary flashed him a look of respect. ‘It’s a chance.’

  ‘It’s the best we’ve got.’

  Behind, O’Meara beat steadily towards them, even as they headed towards the gully where the tip lay.

  ‘The cops might think of it, too.’

  ‘You think of something better.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for him we could stay holed up here for a week.’ Gary’s eyes glazed as the undergrowth moved near them. ‘You’re on, let’s move it.’

  She had followed the police cars as they headed in a steady high-pitched volume of noise towards the tip, blue lights flashing. Nobody noticed the speed at which she was travelling, not even a traffic officer clearing the intersections for them to go through. As she had hoped, she was seen as part of the convoy.

  At the entrance to the tip she panicked momentarily. A man wearing a yellow mud-splattered coat operated the barrier at the entrance. He was examining passes and raising and lowering the bar to allow authorised people through. She scrabbled frantically in Nick’s glove pocket with one hand, found a computer print-out card and waved it at the attendant. The bar lifted. But now she was hard on the heels of the convoy and she could see Campbell two cars ahead. Any moment now, in the close confines of the road to the tip, leading between the hills, he would spot her in his rear vision.

  The hills crouched in bands of scrubby bush and grey rock around them. At the far end of the tip the line of police cars stopped. She pulled up behind them. The smell appalled her, as it always did, but here in the hills today a high wind was blowing and strengthening all the time, its wild and violent motion in the gully sending papers flying in the air and casting the stench far beyond the tip’s epicentre. People moved there, figures lost amongst the bright hard light, the chaos and the whirling debris. Nothing grew in the razed earth, but close by some people had taken up residence in a packing case, and a child dressed in rags stared grimy-eyed across the wasteland. Smoke billowed from a fire, adding to the confusion.

  Through a loudhailer Constable Tippett was addressing clusters of people who had been dumping rubbish, advising them to vacate the tip with all possible speed. The graders which shovelled the banks of rubbish forward into the pits slowed down, halted.

  Campbell walked back along the line towards Rose, his face like cold slate.

  ‘What are you doing here, Mrs Kendall?’

  ‘Is Larissa in there?’

  ‘No. Now get out.’

  ‘Jason’ll speak to me, I know he will.’

  ‘O’Meara is in there with a weapon. I’m ordering you out. You’re under arrest if you don’t leave.’

  But it was too late.

  Two figures emerged from the bush in the far distance. It was difficult to see them properly, but one of them walked in evident agony; even through the haze it was clear that his trouser leg was covered with blood. />
  ‘Drop your weapon. Drop your weapon, we have you covered,’ Campbell called over his loudhailer. Gary hesitated, the bravado melting as Jason had prayed, if that were the right word, that it might, and flung the gun in front of his feet.

  ‘Put your hands on your head, and keep walking towards us.’

  But Gary stood immobilised, looking across his shoulder at the figure emerging from the bush near where they had walked out.

  For O’Meara it was foreign country. He was nearly as scratched and bruised as Jason and Gary but his toughness, the physical perfection of his body, had kept him in touch with the men ahead.

  Now he saw it all, himself against the world. Gary, Jason, standing mad and still in the infernal landscape. Advancing towards him walked the line of men who had been his friends, and behind them the woman. The world was full of evil. He had tried to stop it. He had tried to tell them all.

  A cold day gleaming with a distant rim of sunlight behind dense grey cumulus. Twenty-two of them, men and women, sat across the roadway into Weyville.

  O’Meara had been looking forward to the game. He hoped to be on duty inside the grounds. He was good at rugby; he made the All Black trials once. If he had been selected it would have been great, but even the trials were wonderful. There had been an all-night party up home in the King Country. The cars had parked in the paddocks until four in the morning; pretty well everyone in the neighbourhood there, waiting for him to arrive back home. When he turned up they had all stood on their horns for him. The sound ricocheted around his dreams, the moment never to be forgotten, the kid who made it (or near enough, nobody seemed to care that he didn’t make the team), that’s what their siren sound told him.

  So he had waited, that day when the Springboks would play in Weyville looming closer and closer. At the after-match function he would talk to them. ‘Nearly made it into the team myself once.’ He could hear himself drop it into the conversation, modestly, of course. ‘Made the trials, well you know there’s a lot of competition for a spot in this country. Like yours, you know what it’s like.’ He expected they would win. Indeed, he could not bear to think of their defeat at the hands of a provincial team, it would be unworthy of the local team to beat the ’Boks. ‘Great game,’ he would say. ‘See you warming up a few moves there, you won’t be so lucky when you hit the tests, the All Blacks’ll chew you up.’ A bit of chaffing.