Dark Country (Dungirri)

by Parry, Bronwyn

  Pretty much the same thing he’d said the last four times she’d been in to check him. Except those times, he’d been in bed, covered by the blanket, and now he stood wearing only his T-shirt and jocks, and she should have been checking his eyes for responsiveness, but instead she found herself checking over his legs – long, muscular, naked legs – and his large, beautiful, equally naked feet.

  Lack of sleep must be fusing her brain and drying her throat, because she’d seen plenty of men’s legs over the years without those effects occurring.

  The feet turned towards her, and a yawn gave her the excuse to close her eyes and keep them closed until she could look at eye level, and not at anything in between. Professional. Impersonal. Like she was supposed to be.

  She was too tired to read the lightning-flash of emotion in his eyes before the granite settled again. Pain, probably. Those bruises had to hurt.

  ‘I’ve got a jar of ointment that Beth Wilson swears by for bruising. I’ll find it for you.’ She blocked out the thought of touching his face again to tend to the bruises. She’d get the damn jar, leave it out for him, and then she’d go and take a shower. A long, cold one, to wake up her brain and cool down her body.

  By the time she’d showered, ironed a clean uniform shirt, dressed, and dragged a brush through her hair, he’d had his shower and was moving around in the kitchen.

  The aroma of coffee jolted another two brain cells awake before she entered the room. He leaned against the bench, mug in hand, in black jeans and T-shirt as he’d been wearing last night, although the T-shirt was a tighter cut, sculpting his body more closely. His bags stood by the door, the leather jacket draped across them.

  ‘I made coffee,’ he said, nodding towards the plunger on the table.

  ‘An omelette last night, coffee this morning – have you got a halo I didn’t notice, Gillespie?’

  ‘Not me, Blue. Just a caffeine addiction.’ The closed expression never changed, but something about that ‘Blue’ softened it. Or maybe that was just her imagination.

  He drained his mug, then rinsed it out under the tap while she poured her own coffee.

  ‘I’ll head off. I want to catch Jeanie early, then get back to Sydney.’

  ‘Oh.’ The mug she’d just lifted shook in her hand, and she lowered it to the table again. Of course he was going. He had no reason to stay, and she had no reason to detain him.

  He paused at the door as he picked up his gear and looked back at her. ‘Thanks.’

  That low rumble of his voice was a fraction softer. Oh, yeah, like basalt was softer than granite.

  She mentally kicked another brain cell into action. ‘All the best, Gillespie. And make sure you avoid the Barretts.’

  He nodded once and then he was gone, pulling the door shut behind him. A chilly draught from outside swirled around her, and for a moment she stood motionless, not able to think, before she reached for the coffee again and drank a long, strong slug of it.

  She had to get moving. She had a hell of a day ahead, a mile-high stack of paperwork, and with the senior sergeant in Birraga away on a course, she’d be lucky if she made it home before midnight.

  And there’d be no-one to care if she ate dinner or not.

  Gil walked down the main street, staring ahead to avoid eye-contact with the few locals about, but all he could see in his mind’s eye was a beautiful, sleepy woman, with tousled hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and a cotton robe that entirely failed to hide her curves. Strength and vulnerability and dedication and attitude all wrapped up in a body he’d dreamed about in the rare minutes he’d managed to sleep between her hourly visitations.

  Shit. He dragged his thoughts away from remembering those dreams. Talk about a waste of mental energy. In an hour, he’d be out of Dungirri forever. And then he had Russo to deal with, and how he’d do that he still had no idea. He had no leverage, as he’d had with Vince. Chances were he’d end up at the bottom of Sydney Harbour, breathing seaweed.

  All the more reason to make things right with Jeanie, first. And now that he saw Dungirri in daylight, he figured that Jeanie might need what he intended giving her. In the years since he’d left, economic decay had eaten through the core of the town, and only a handful of the businesses remained. Across the road, empty shopfronts gaped between Ward’s Rural Supplies and the hotel on the corner, and on the side of the road he walked along, the Pappas’s small corner store seemed to be the only business still open, even the old council office and depot beside it were padlocked and boarded up. Dungirri had shrivelled to a dry, dead husk, and he couldn’t imagine any business managing to do well here, even an essential one like Jeanie’s.

  He reached his car, dumped his gear in the back seat, and crossed the road to the café, pulling his jacket tighter against the morning chill as he walked. The café was open, but there weren’t any breakfast customers about.

  ‘Gil!’ Jeanie’s face creased into a huge, welcoming smile as soon as he walked in, and he didn’t know which surprised him more – the rare experience of a genuine welcome, or the stark reality of how much she’d aged. The once-grey hair was white, her hands misshapen by arthritis, and she seemed smaller, frailer, fragile beside him.

  Yet her eyes still held their sparkle, and the hands she clasped around his were warm and surprisingly strong as she tugged him towards a table and made him sit down.

  ‘It’s so good to see you, Gil, although not with those bruises. Ryan was in not long ago. He said you were back, had run into some trouble last night. Are you okay?’

  ‘I’m fine, Jeanie.’ Although the sense that he was walking on unsteady, unfamiliar ground made him grit his teeth and move straight to the point of his visit. ‘I came to repay what I owe you.’

  ‘Owe me?’ Her puzzled frown seemed entirely genuine. ‘You don’t owe me anything, Gil.’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ He drew in a slow breath, determined to acknowledge what she wouldn’t even consider a debt. ‘You paid for the lawyer for my probation hearing, and for his work proving the falsity of the blood-alcohol report and having the conviction overturned. Until a month or so back, I never knew that you did that – I thought it was on Legal Aid. But the lawyer happened to come into the pub one day, and he recognised me. We got talking.’

  Jeanie clasped her hands on the Formica table-top. ‘You needed proper legal representation, Gil, and the lawyer they sent from Legal Aid for your committal hearing was a raw graduate without much sense. I never begrudged a cent of the money.’

  ‘You were saving for that trip to Italy. To search for your husband’s family. You never went, did you?’

  ‘No. That was just a dream – not as important as getting you released.’

  But she twisted her wedding ring on her finger, probably without even realising she was doing it, and the small, typically Jeanie gesture made him all the more determined. He pulled the cheque he’d written earlier out of his jeans pocket and slid it across the table.

  ‘Well, you can go now. Take a friend. Do a world tour, if you want.’

  She stared at it, looked up at him and pushed the cheque back across the table. ‘Don’t be silly. That’s ten … twenty times more than the lawyer cost.’

  ‘Jeanie, just take it. I sold the pub. Prices have gone sky-high, and I’ve got more money than I know what to do with. You, of all people, deserve some share of that.’ And if he ended up breathing seaweed, she would get a big share of the rest of it. That was already signed and sealed in his lawyer’s office.

  ‘I can’t take that much from you,’ she protested, her stubbornness as great as her generosity. ‘You’ve worked for every cent of it.’

  ‘And now I’m spending it how I want. Jeanie, it’s not just the lawyer’s fees I owe you.’ Damn the rock in his throat. He needed to say this. ‘You gave me a chance, gave me a job and trusted me, when almost nobody else did. And later, in prison … I never knew how to say –’ Shit, he still didn’t know how, and the rock in his throat was a boulder, and all he could do was push out
some words he hoped she’d understand. ‘Your visits, they made a difference for me.’

  Her hand closed over his, gentle, just as it had all those times she’d been to see him and he’d been silent, unbelieving, too unfamiliar with kindness to trust in it.

  ‘I just wished I could have done more for you.’

  ‘You did more than enough.’ He squeezed her fingers, disentangled his hand from hers – yeah, okay, so he still didn’t know how to deal with that, either – and glanced around for something, anything, to change the subject.

  The girl he’d seen last night came in from out the back, carrying a box of drink bottles, and she smiled across at him and Jeanie before she went to stock the fridge in the far corner.

  ‘Another one of your strays?’ he asked Jeanie.

  ‘Yes, I guess so. Megan’s had it tough. Her adoptive parents died in an accident a few years back, and Community Services eventually let her contact her birth family. But her mother had died of cancer already, so now Megan’s only got her grandparents. Do you remember the Russells? Barb would have been your age. She got pregnant straight after she finished high school, but she never told anyone who the father was.’

  Barb Russell. The memory, long buried, slammed back into his consciousness. A hot summer night, and a bunch of teenagers gathered at the swimming hole, celebrating their final exam results. He’d been passing by and Mark Strelitz, friendly as ever, had called him over, handed him a beer, and invited him to join the party.

  On the fringes of the group, Barb and he had got talking, and then she’d started crying for some reason, and he’d put his arms around her, clumsily trying to offer some sort of comfort, and one thing had eventually led to another …

  Gil turned sharply to look across at Megan, who was laughing with a young man who’d come in to pay for petrol, flicking her straight black hair back from her face with long, fine fingers.

  He stared at her face, and the reason she’d looked familiar last night hit him harder than the Barretts’ punches. Her features were softer, more delicate, but he saw damned near the same brows, eyes and cheekbones every morning in the mirror.

  He heard a chair scrape back against the tiles, realised vaguely that it was his, but the need to escape roared in his head and without even a goodbye he walked out of the café, away from Jeanie’s too-perceptive gaze, and away from his daughter.

  The mechanic sent out from Birraga to check the roadworthiness of the patrol car didn’t arrive until after eight-thirty. Adam had the four-wheel drive out already, responding to a theft report east of town, which left Kris stranded at the Dungirri station half the morning, unable to leave for Birraga. At least it gave her a chance to reduce the accumulated pile of paperwork – not a task that improved her mood, however.

  The mechanic finally gave the all-clear to drive the patrol car, and she backed out of the driveway just before ten o’clock, giving way to and then following an old truck that kept her to a crawl along the main street.

  The slow pace gave her time to glance down the side street beside the pub, and she quickly flicked on her indicator and swung left.

  Two guys stood by Gil’s car, peering in. Despite their neat jackets, she didn’t read that as a good sign. A newer sedan was next to Gil’s car, probably their vehicle, and she parked beside it, studying them as she got out. The jackets and polished shoes screamed ‘city’, and their confident returning of her gaze said ‘detective’ just as loudly.

  ‘Can I assist you, gentlemen?’ She kept her voice cool and polite – a whole lot politer than ‘What the hell are you doing here, without even the courtesy of notifying me?’ – but the guilty discomfort in the older guy’s expression told her he’d read the unspoken question. The younger one barely managed to hide a smirk.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Joe Petric, from State Crime Command.’ The more senior officer showed his ID, and so did Mr Cocky – Constable Craig Macklin. ‘We’re investigating a woman’s disappearance, and looking for a man by the name of Morgan Gillespie to … assist with our enquiries. I believe this is his vehicle.’

  Shit. She nodded, not quite trusting herself to speak. What was Gillespie involved with? Assist with our enquiries – yep, that usually translated to ‘prime suspect’. In a woman’s disappearance – and he’d spent the night in her home. Yet all she could think was that she’d felt safe.

  ‘It is his car,’ she confirmed.

  ‘You know Gillespie?’ Petric asked. ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘I met him last night. Wait here. I’ll see if I can find out where he went.’

  She crossed the road towards Jeanie’s. Three hours. Close on three hours since Gil had left this morning. Would he still be at the café?

  Jeanie met her at the door, a frown creasing her face as she gestured to the men by Gil’s car.

  ‘Is something wrong, Kris? Is Gil all right?’

  ‘He’s not here?’ Other than Megan, hovering nearby, Kris could see the café was empty.

  ‘He was here about seven, for a while,’ Jeanie said. ‘Maybe half an hour. But then he left, just walked off down the Birraga road. I’m worried about him, Kris. I don’t think – I don’t think he quite knew what he was doing.’

  ‘You think he was ill?’ Another cause for concern layered on top of the detectives’ insinuations. Gil had seemed quite okay this morning. But what if, after all, one of the punches to the head had done some real damage?

  ‘No, but he was upset, shocked, about something I’d told him.’

  ‘Something to do with his father?’

  ‘No. It was … a private matter.’ Jeanie clammed up, her face set. And although Kris wondered, there was no sense pressing for anything more – if Jeanie held a confidence, she was immune to any pressure. ‘We’ve been watching for him, watching his car, but he hasn’t come back. Those men – who are they?’

  ‘Police officers. They just want to ask him some questions.’ About a missing woman. She kept that to herself and spoke calmly, as if everything was fine. ‘I’ll drive out to his father’s old place, see if he’s there. Call me if you see or hear from him, please, Jeanie.’

  She returned to where the detectives waited, had just reached them when some instinct made her glance around, and there was Gil, walking along the road in front of the café, shoulders hunched, hands in his pockets. He saw them and slowed, his eyes flicking past her, over the two officers, back to her again. For just a second, he stopped.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Macklin’s fingers flex, move to his waist.

  But Gil didn’t run. He continued walking towards them, slow and steady, watching the two detectives as if he’d seen that slight movement of Macklin’s, sliding his hands out of his pockets as he approached so that when he stood before them, it was clear he held no weapon.

  He ignored her, keeping a steady, wary gaze on the two men. The testosterone flowed between the three so thickly she could almost smell it.

  Petric, it seemed, had met him before, but he introduced himself again, showed his ID, introduced Macklin, all with a firm, follow-the-rules professionalism. Watching Gil closely, he added, ‘We have a warrant to search and if necessary, seize your vehicle.’

  Gil’s dark eyes narrowed to slits. ‘Show me.’

  Petric handed the paper to him, and Gil cast his eyes across it before passing it to Kris. She glanced over it herself.

  ‘It’s all in order, Gil.’

  He nodded, so tightly wound that she half-expected something in his body to snap. But every instinct in her screamed that it was distrust, not guilt.

  ‘Would you unlock your vehicle for us, Mr Gillespie?’ Petric asked smoothly.

  Gil fished keys from his pocket, unlocked the door, then stood back, arms folded in front of him.

  The younger officer, Macklin, began to go through the contents of the glove box. From what Kris could see, it seemed to be mostly insurance papers, a torch, a cleaning cloth. Petric glanced into the back seat, then leaned in the driv
er’s door to pop open the boot. The latch clicked open, and Petric strode around to open it fully.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Petric groaned, just as a sickly, nauseating aroma wafted to Kris, tainting the cool freshness of the morning air.

  A woman’s naked body lay inside, bound, gagged and brutally beaten, dried blood from her slit throat splattered on her torso.

  THREE

  Oh Christ, Marci, not like this.

  Gil closed his eyes against the sight, willing it away, but when he opened them again she was still there, horrifically real in his vision, not some nightmare imagining.

  He fought back the anger steaming into rage. He might have often wished Marci out of his life, but he’d never wished her dead. He’d done what he could for her, and it hadn’t been enough. Either someone had got to her before she could leave or else stupid, stupid Marci had tried to play one lot off against the other for whatever she could get, and had lost, big-time.

  And now she was dead, and in his car.

  ‘Morgan Gillespie, I am arresting you on suspicion of the murder of Marcella Doonan.’

  He nodded, muttered ‘Yes’ when Petric recited the standard caution and asked him if he understood.

  Yeah, he understood all right. Someone was framing him for Marci’s murder.

  He dragged his eyes away from Marci’s battered face.

  The sergeant was pale, her skin against the blue of her uniform almost white. In her eyes he saw horror, and a million questions. But not the condemnation he’d been dreading.

  ‘I didn’t kill her.’ He spoke to the three of them, but saw only her. Believe me, Blue. ‘I know it might appear that way, but I did not kill Marci.’

  Kris swallowed, turned away, and he wanted to read her reaction, but Petric stepped between them, ordering him to put his hands up against a nearby tree, and as he endured the frisk and the cuffs snapping onto his wrists, he could hear only her voice, cold and hard, telling Macklin to keep away from the rear of the car, to avoid walking on any evidence.