Burning Lies

by Helene Young

  He walked a hundred metres, waving the wand at patches of dried grass and leaving a glowing trail behind him. The spiky vegetation transformed into vibrant, living sculptures. The heat was growing with each step.

  With his free hand, he tugged his collar higher and adjusted his cap low over his eyes. ‘That’ll do it,’ he muttered, stepping back from the growing inferno, feeling the wind ruffling his hair around his ears. A good stiff breeze, a steep hill and a load of fuel. Only be a matter of minutes before a fire front a couple of hundred metres wide would begin its inexorable march through the trees.

  His ute was parked far enough away for safety, but not so far that he couldn’t get to it in a hurry. He’d laid the embryonic fire in the right place. Not like that idiot last night who’d almost trapped him and the crew with his piss-poor efforts at laying a containment line. Chris spat on the ground. The bloke should have known better; he’d been doing it long enough.

  No mistakes like that for Chris. He could afford to saunter back and lean on the bonnet, enjoying the life in the leaping flames. They danced and shimmered, forming eddies of orange tipped with white heat. Streaks of chartreuse and indigo swirled through the fire as the different barks and leaf oils ignited. There was nothing more beautiful than fire. It mesmerised him, just as it had almost forty years ago. Back then, they were tiny fires, contained in a barbeque pit and closely supervised.

  Now? Now fire was his to command.

  Time to go. He had things to do before he could start the day. He straightened up reluctantly and forced himself into the car. The bitter smoke irritated his throat as he inhaled a deep lungful of air. Something about burning eucalypts gave him a heady rush. Worth the discomfort of its antiseptic overtones.

  The car radio crackled into life as he turned the ignition. The man from the bureau of meteorology was halfway through the morning weather report. He turned it off. No need to listen to him saying there was a complete fire ban due to the predicted increasing winds in the afternoon. He’d known that this morning when he got out of bed and looked at the sky. The fine, high cirrus cloud, turning vibrant pink with the sunrise, spelt a change of weather. It never lied.

  His phone rang and he squinted at the pad, angling it so he could read the screen against the glare. ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ he grunted before answering. ‘G’day.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Just finishing up some back-burning.’

  ‘You’re crazy. Your trail of destruction has even made it into the Sydney Morning Herald. Don’t think I’m not capable of going to the police. I am. This is my company now.’

  ‘Easy to say, harder to do, mate. It won’t look good. I’ve got records too.’

  For a moment there was only static down the phone line. When the caller spoke again he sounded resigned. ‘Stop pissing about and get down to the Sydney office, Jackson. I will not negotiate over the phone.’

  ‘You’ll negotiate where and when I decide to.’

  Chris hung up and dropped the phone onto the seat next to him, feeling the anger roil in his gut. He eased down on the accelerator and drove sedately along the track. The leaping, trembling fire helped to settle him. The scrub at the base of the trees rustled as small animals fled from the heat and smoke. He felt a twinge of guilt. Something always died with fire. Something always lost out.

  Sometimes that was tragic.

  Sometimes there was no other way.

  Chapter 4

  ‘ENOUGH. I want this resolved now.’ Grant McCormack was oblivious to the sweeping views over Sydney Harbour Bridge from the top floor of the McCormack Mines building. He strode back to the table and slapped his mobile phone down on the polished top in front of his company lawyer and fellow director, Don Adler. ‘Get rid of Jackson. We’ll find another way.’

  Having newly taken the helm of the family mining company, Grant was struggling to cut away some of the dead wood. And that was literal as well as metaphorical. He couldn’t see the need to hang on to anything that wasn’t a core exploration business. Greentrees Plantations and their swathes of pines had no place in a mining company. Their only value was in what lay in the soil beneath their roots. They were an acquisition his father should never have made but burning them down was not an option. Grant had no stomach for arson.

  Adler waved the outburst away. ‘Give him time and he’ll deliver. He has in the past.’

  ‘And if someone dies because of it?’ Grant fired back, pushing his cuffs up his wrists. ‘Instead of negotiating with the landowners in good faith we burn them out? Keep paying a psychotic firebug hush money for the rest of his natural life?’

  The silence dragged on as the two men eyeballed each other. This time Grant was not backing down.

  ‘So, what would you have me do? Kill him? Dispose of his body?’ Adler queried, his sarcastic smile not reaching his pale grey eyes. He was twice the age of the younger man, employed by Grant’s father as a newly qualified lawyer when McCormack Mines was a fledgling company grubbing around in the dirt looking for tin.

  Grant could only shake his head, his nostrils pinching with disgust. ‘There will be no killing.’ On each word he leant a little further across the polished mahogany. Adler held his stare then shrugged dismissively.

  ‘Keeping Chris Jackson on a retainer for five years has been a small price to pay. We’ll recoup it in the lower price of the land purchases.’

  ‘It’s criminal.’

  ‘Your father didn’t think so.’

  ‘My father’s not running the company any more.’

  ‘No, he’s not.’ Adler managed to make the words sound like an insult.

  Grant ignored the slap-down. His old man was in a secure facility with advanced Alzheimer’s. His rapid decline had given Grant the chance to radically change the direction of the business. Those changes were bearing fruit and he did not want the company tainted by a connection with a convicted arsonist.

  Stripping McCormack Mines back to its core business of digging minerals out of the earth relied on mining permits. Governments tended to refuse permits to companies that weren’t seen to be aboveboard. Grant had had enough of Adler’s Machiavellian ways, but for now he had to keep him on side, and in the company. Adler knew too many secrets.

  ‘We’re going round in circles,’ Grant said, breaking the silence. ‘Secure the parcels on either side. Get an exploration permit for them and we have a stranglehold on the other block. Once the dust settles we buy it back from the receivers who are dismantling Greentrees.’

  ‘We’ve already tried that.’ Adler sounded like he was lecturing a toddler and it grated. But Grant didn’t bite. ‘The widow won’t sell and the deceased estate is still going through probate.’

  ‘The widow won’t sell for the figure she’s been offered. Give her more money.’

  ‘Then it’s unviable.’ Adler turned up his elegant palms.

  The condescension was almost Grant’s undoing. It took a great deal of effort to keep the anger from his face. Instead, he rolled his toes tight inside his shoes. ‘If you and my father had been smart you would have transferred the deeds for the block at Happy Jack Valley from Greentrees to MCM before you started burning the other GT pine plantations in New South Wales and Victoria. Anyway, you don’t expect me to believe you didn’t get a tax advantage out of it by writing the timber off the books.’

  ‘Tax advantage or not, we’re still bleeding money.’

  Grant continued to push Adler. ‘Write it off the balance sheet and move on. There’s enough happening in Western Australia around Kalgoorlie, and potentially up in North Queensland.’

  Adler shook his head. ‘Give Jackson another week. If he hasn’t done the burn-off by then we can reassess.’ He was on his feet now, straightening the lapels of his bespoke suit.

  Grant wasn’t surrendering. ‘Next week we’re flying to Cairns to meet Mr Jackson in person. Set it up.’

  ‘That’s not necessary.’

  ‘Either you set it up or I’ll tell m
y brother exactly who’s sleeping in our father’s bed now.’

  Grant got a great deal of satisfaction from the fury in Don Adler’s face. He kept his hands flat on the table, fighting the urge to do some damage to the aquiline nose opposite him. His jaw ached with the effort of controlling his temper.

  Adler swung away, buttoning his coat before reaching for the door handle. He stopped with the door half open, venom in his voice and hatred in his eyes. ‘Your mother is never going to vote with you.’

  The click of the latch closing set Grant’s muscles free and he ran his hand through his thick blond hair. ‘No, she won’t,’ he said into the empty room. ‘Not while you’re screwing her senseless.’

  Chapter 5

  ‘DANIEL, you’re being unreasonable. We don’t have time for a horse.’ Kaitlyn pushed her wet hair behind her ears, thankful the sweet cinnamon of her shampoo had replaced the smell of smoke.

  ‘You don’t have time, you mean.’ Dan’s normally cheerful face was screwed up in disgust. She stifled a sigh. By now she thought her son understood that her switch from Dan to Daniel meant it was time to back down. Apparently not.

  ‘If I don’t have time, then neither do you.’ Kaitlyn dropped the cooler bag she was packing onto the granite bench with a small thud. ‘When was the last time you cleaned your room, put your bike away or bothered to do your chores?’

  He glared back at her, his brown eyes starting to sheen with the threat of tears. Even his freckles seemed defiant, stubborn reminders that the milky-white skin both Dan and Kait shared didn’t suit the hot burn of the north Australian sun.

  ‘You’re mean, you’re mean! That’s why I don’t have a dad. You’re too mean.’ He whirled away as the tears welled, his grubby training shoes sliding on the tiled floor as he shot out the screen door. It slammed behind him, but didn’t rattle the wide, solid windows next to it.

  Kaitlyn leant against the kitchen bench. His words hurt. She knew he didn’t understand the full effect of them. How could he? Her little boy needed a father, and she was incapable of providing one for him. The guilt ate into her, twisting like a knife in her stomach.

  ‘He doesn’t mean it.’ The quiet words from behind were meant to soothe her, but they didn’t. Her mother rested her hand on top of Kaitlyn’s. The length, the shape, was identical; only the surface had changed with the years.

  Kaitlyn let her hand lie for a moment before she straightened up and pulled away. She didn’t have time for self-pity any more than she had time for a horse. Saturdays should be for family, not heading down the range for an overtime shift. She should have refused to do it.

  ‘I know, I know. There’s no point in wishing things were different. They can’t be.’ She forced a smile. ‘He’ll cope.’ Just like he’s had to cope with so many other disappointments, she added silently.

  ‘Maybe we can find someone interested in Dan exercising their horse.’ Julia was nothing if not persistent.

  Kaitlyn snorted. ‘Then you’ll be tied up driving him to that as well as swimming, Scouts and whatever other sport’s in season.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Her mother was scheming. Her schemes usually involved Kaitlyn being caught up in something she had no intention of finishing. This time Kait wasn’t going to be ambushed.

  ‘That’s a no, Julia. A big, fat no.’

  ‘Of course, my darling.’ Her mother patted her hand one more time before she went back to the stove and her simmering pot. ‘You know best. I’ve put your overalls in the wash already. I hope you don’t mind, but the smell was quite intense.’

  Kaitlyn tried to ignore the tiny niggle of annoyance. Julia took cleanliness to a new level. In this case it was probably justified, but sometimes Kait felt as though she lived in an advertisement for washing powder. She also knew she’d just been diverted from the real issue. Deflection was Julia’s specialty.

  ‘Thanks for that,’ she replied with a small forced smile. ‘It was only a grassfire, but there must have been something dead in the paddock. The stench was pretty rough.’ Her RFB pager had dragged her from sleep. A grassfire was threatening houses along the Dimbulah road. Probably a careless smoker flicking a butt out the window. It made her angry all the same. Courtesy of the early call out she was now pushing to leave for work on time.

  She picked up the cooler bag just as the chime of incoming emails threatened to distract her again. Great, the internet was back up after forty-eight hours offline. She half turned to the laptop, then stopped.

  First things first.

  Daniel was taking his frustration out on the yard. She couldn’t see him behind the giant girth of the rose gum, but the blizzard of silvery-green leaves swirling in the air wasn’t happening by itself. The eucalypt’s pale limbs stretched up to the deep blue sky. In the distance, the McAllister Ranges lay low and long, shimmering in the heat haze as they poked through the smoke. Normally the view lifted some of her angst. Today the blanket of smoke reminded her of the dangerous fire rating and the spate of fires they seemed to be endlessly battling.

  Outside, the storm of petulance abated. Dan shuffled along the fence line, his hands jammed in his pockets, shoes scuffing the earth as he continued to kick at the leaves. He made his way over to the black bike propped against the shed. It was almost too small for him now, but she refused to buy him a new one until Christmas. He’d just have to ride with his knees up around his ears a little longer. At the rate he was growing she’d be buying a new bike every year.

  She checked the clock again. Running out of time. In ten minutes she’d have to be out the door. Leaving arguments unfinished was a cardinal sin she’d never commit again.

  The screen door swung back on its hinges and she swatted away the fly that immediately homed in on her face. ‘Dan? Honey, can we talk, please? I need to leave for work in a minute.’

  He grunted, fiddling with his bike as she walked towards him. The determination on his face always tugged at her, even more so when she was about to leave him for six days. She resisted the temptation to run her hand through the coppery waves curling round his ears. A seven-year-old is not a mummy’s boy, but she loved the slippery feel of his hair over her fingers.

  ‘Dan, you know if I could I would gladly give you a horse.’ She paused, making him shift his eyes until they met hers. ‘You know I’d do anything for you, but this …’ She rolled her palm up. ‘This is just not possible. Julia can’t help with a horse. She’s nowhere near strong enough and she’s almost seventy-seven. You know that. Riding lessons during school holidays are as good as it gets, kiddo.’

  His gaze dropped to the floor and his mouth turned down, but she saw resignation rather than hostility in the lowered shoulders. ‘I know, but it’s not fair.’

  ‘Neither is it unfair. It’s just the way it is.’ Whether he liked it or not, he knew that was the truth, just as she did. ‘You be good for Julia. I’ll be back in six days.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He bent over the bike again, but not before she’d seen a tear roll down his cheek. God, it hurt.

  She raised her chin, willing her own eyes to stay dry. ‘Hug.’ She reached out and gathered him close, smelling the sweet fragrance of shampoo, the tart spice of gingernut biscuits and the overlaying bite of the eucalyptus leaves. He melted against her, turning his cheek to rest on her white T-shirt. She felt the sob catch before he released it. ‘I know, baby, I know. I’ll be back soon.’ She let him go the instant he straightened away. The rare hug was a concession she treasured and never took for granted.

  Ten minutes later, Kait shrugged into her green jacket with its Border Watch logo, her temper simmering. Why the hell had she accepted an extra duty on a day off? She dragged her auburn hair into a tight plait to restrain the curls. Four-day trips were bad enough. A six-day duty was way too long.

  But she was their last option. They needed more crew, but government regulations made the training long and intensive. They couldn’t just hire someone off the street. Knowing all that didn’t ease her resentment. Usually she could sum
mon a smile when she went to work. Not today.

  Tinted sunscreen was about as much make-up as she had time for, and eye drops meant there were no traces of her private tears. She stopped just long enough to check her reflection in the full-length mirror. She was once more the consummate professional heading to work, protecting the Australian coastline.

  She swung by the computer. Forty-three emails. One was from the Department of Immigration. Something to do with the application for Daniel’s passport. When they moved to North Queensland she’d reverted to her maiden name and changed Daniel’s surname to Scott as well. It made it easier to leave the hurt and pain behind.

  She read the first line, then re-read it, her frustration escalating into the red zone. They’d rejected the application.

  ‘Bloody bureaucracy.’ Apparently she was missing a signature: Dan’s father’s. She wanted to stamp her foot at the stupidity of it. It was a bit hard to get a dead man to sign a damn form.

  Her sigh emptied her lungs. When would it end? Five years after that devastating fire and still he made her life difficult. She closed the computer. Too late to worry about it now. She’d work it out when she got home.

  Julia and Dan were nowhere to be seen as she drove out the front gate. She ignored the dart of disappointment and pulled up at the T-junction with the main road. The car seemed to veer to the left, but she made it another 500 metres down the road before the thudding noise made her stop. The way the car dipped as she hit the hard shoulder told its own story.

  ‘Damn it.’ She gave in and kicked the bloody flat tyre, knowing that wasn’t going to fix it. The road was empty and, at this time on a Saturday, she’d be lucky to get the RACQ out to help in less than an hour.

  She bit back another curse and shrugged out of her jacket, slinging it into the car. Changing a tyre was no great challenge, except that she’d be late for work and hot and sweaty by the time she finished.

  It took about ten minutes to get the car jacked up and the offending tyre off. In that time only three vehicles passed by. The two with women drivers slowed, offered sympathy and understandably carried on. The third one tooted and kept driving right on by, with a very masculine yell of approval out the window.