by Sue Williams
I fell for what seemed forever, scrabbling at the air. Whack, I landed hip-first on something squishy. Grain? No one ever mentions grain is squishy. I lay there a moment, winded, a dull thudding in my head. Black all around, just a square of moonlit sky above. It looked a long way up, that small square.
This would be my end, then. In a stinking, dusty silo. Monaghan would probably shoot me, then the grain would swallow my remains. A song popped into my head. ‘Lost in Love’ by Air Supply. I shook my head, feeling sick. But the lyric kept going round and round in my head. Jesus, I refuse to die with ‘Lost in Love’ my final bloody thought. Come on, move, Cass.
I felt around, then shrieked. A lifeless arm was sticking out from under me. On the other side, another one. Was that the something squishy? A body? I’d landed on a body? Agh. Holding my breath, I carefully rolled off.
I pant-gagged in the stench. Was it someone dead? I touched a wrist, felt for a pulse. How’s a person supposed to know where to find a bloody pulse? I whimpered. Helen Keller could recognise people just by feeling their face. I ran my fingers over the eyes, nose and cheeks. No idea. Down over the collar. Leather. Lots of leather. A two-cow leather coat.
I snuffled, cowering back. I darted out a hand, looking for his gun. No go. I flapped my hand around on the grain. Bingo. I stuffed the gun deep inside my knickers. Grabbing his torch, I waved it at his face. His eyes were closed. Was that a flicker in his eyelid?
‘Mum?’ A whisper from above. ‘Is that you snuffling and whimpering down there?’
‘Brad!’ I flicked the torch up. Brad was suspended from something by his belt. Not the most dignified of positions. But alive.
‘You OK, Mum?’ He spoke in an urgent whisper.
‘Nothing broken.’ I gagged again on the gut-wrenching stink. ‘Monaghan’s here with me though. I’m not sure if he’s dead or just unconscious.’
‘Jesus! We’ve got to get out of here. Stand on the grain. Reach up. I’ll hang down and grab your hands. If you unhook my belt, maybe we can reach the hatch.’
‘The wheat will swallow me if I stand,’ I wailed.
‘That’s just a myth. It only does that if the auger’s going, when they pump out the grain. Wheat’s solid as the ground otherwise.’
‘What about McLeod’s bloody Daughters, son? That whatsername, blonde woman, nearly died. Lucky that good-looking fella swept her up into his arms at the last moment. What was his name…’ I coughed.
‘Focus, Mum! That was probably canola. Grab my hands.’
I stood, waved around, felt his warm hands.
‘What’s that awful smell, Brad?’
‘You don’t want to know.’ He grunted, our hands slipping as he tried to lift my weight.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘I’ll tell you when we get out of here.’ More grunting.
My feet were still on the wheat. ‘I don’t think this plan’s working.’
I let go, flopping back onto the grain.
‘I’ll phone Dean.’ But Monaghan had my phone. I held my breath, felt around his pockets. A phone. Mine, mangled from the fall. I pressed buttons. Nothing. I grabbed his phone and stabbed at it. Enter PIN.
‘Any idea of Monaghan’s PIN?’ I whispered.
Brad groaned.
‘Your phone, Brad?’
‘Out of battery.’
‘Ah.’ Blood trickled into my eyes. I wiped it away. ‘Listen, we’ll be fine. We’ll just wait a bit. Sun’ll be up any minute. Be heaps of people here when it gets light. We’ll shout for help. And Monaghan is dead, I’m sure of it.’ Fairly sure.
Brad slumped from his beam like a disheartened bat. In the torchlight, I could see his arm was still in the sling and his face was bruised. His trousers were hauled half-way up his back.
It was long past time for a little mother-reunited-with-her-bruised-son dialogue. If I could have reached him, I’d have wrapped him in a hug. ‘I’m sorry, son.’
‘What for?’
‘For everything. For getting you into all this.’ My voice was croaky.
‘Oh, Mum. I got myself into it. I was angry with Dean.’
‘Dean was plain wrong, Bradley. You could do anything if you put your mind to it.’
‘Maybe.’ He grunted, trying to ease his trousers.
‘What happened, how did you get in here?’ I said.
‘I knew I’d seen a car outside the shop the night of the fire. Terry’s ute.’
I sucked in another breath of putrid air. ‘Is that smell a dead kangaroo?’
‘No.’ He paused. ‘And I wasn’t going to Monaghan, not after that dismal interview. Or Dean. I went to Terry.’
‘Christ. Is the stink Terry?’
‘Will you stop interrupting? I told him I had something that could help his brother’s investigation.’
He cried out.
‘Brad? You all right?’
‘I think my trousers are ripping.’
‘Well, we’re all in a bit of discomfort here. No point moaning. Anyway. The smell?’ I flicked the torch around.
‘If you’ll just bloody listen.’
Dead rats maybe. Have to be one big heap of rats to make a smell this gigantic.
‘I guessed the key you found might fit something at Ernie’s shack. So I told Terry we should go there and search. When we arrived, Monaghan was waiting. He slapped a pair of handcuffs on me and dragged me to his car. Terry seemed as shocked as I was.’
‘He’s a little Oscar-winner, that Terry.’
Brad grunted, fiddling with his trousers. ‘So Monaghan drove and they started arguing. Terry’s going, “How many will it take, Dale? How many more body bags do I have to buy?” He started saying he should never have got involved and from here on, Monaghan could count him out. Said he was reporting him to Dean.’
Wait. Terry was the woman?
‘Then Monaghan pulled the car over, reached across and smashed Terry’s face. He said, “Too late, mate.” Terry went quiet after that. Monaghan dropped him off, then brought me here.’ Brad sighed. ‘I tried to run, Mum, but…And I lost half my trousers. Pathetic.’
‘No way, son. You were brilliant.’
‘Really?’
‘Yep. Bloody courageous.’
‘Must run in the family then.’
‘Thanks.’ I choked up. Probably something to do with the terrible smell.
‘Yes, you might be misguided, reckless and naive, but you’re definitely courageous, Mum.’
I lay on the grain soaking up our rosy moment. Apart from being trapped inside a silo with a dead-slash-unconscious murderer and a stomach-churning smell, this was quite possibly the best day of my life. The square of sky above softened to the pale grey of dawn.
‘And the stink?’ I said.
‘Clarence. He was…’ The rest of Brad’s answer was drowned out by a metallic screeching. A train! A grain train was pulling up beside the silo. There’d be heaps of people. A driver, anyway.
‘Help!’ I shouted.
Brad joined in.
A hand grabbed my arm. Monaghan sat up, his face a nasty pasty colour.
I screamed, and just then a mechanical whirring started up below. Something shifted. Suddenly I was sinking, I was into the grain to my knees. Monaghan’s hand bit deep into my arm.
‘Brad. I’m sinking.’ My voice was high. ‘You said the grain’s not a problem if the auger isn’t on.’
‘That is the bloody auger. Grab my hand.’
Jesus. I dropped to mid-thigh.
Monaghan plunged down to his neck, his grey face visible just above the grain. He grabbed me underneath the wheat, hands tight around my waist.
‘Mum, quick.’
I sank again, to my knicker line. I let out another scream.
Brad swung back and forth from that beam like he’d worked the circus all his life. He grabbed my wrist. ‘I won’t let go, Mum. I’ll never let you go.’
I believed him. My boy Brad, he’d never let me go. His trousers might though.
‘Shoot him, Mum.’
‘Shoot him?’ I whispered.
‘I can’t hold you both. He’s too heavy.’ Brad wheezed.
Still holding Brad one-handed, I scrabbled for the gun in my knickers. I pointed it at Monaghan. I looked at his bloodless face. Was that fear in the pinches around his eyes?
I shut my eyes. Squeezed the trigger. Deafening noise followed by a crazy pinging as the bullet ricocheted around.
I opened my eyes.
Monaghan stared at me.
Jesus. I should have aimed.
Monaghan’s hand surged out in a burst of grain. He grabbed the gun. Held it against the centre of my chest.
‘You stupid man,’ I hissed. ‘You gunna shoot me? I’m what’s keeping you alive. Me and Brad. We’re your human chain to out of here.’ I sounded braver than I felt.
I looked at him, at his mad, dark eyes.
I grabbed his wrist, knocked the gun from his hand. It fell with a soft plop onto the wheat.
He grunted, let go of me and snatched the gun. Holding in it two hands, he pointed it up at my head. His finger pressed against the trigger.
I closed my eyes. The grain heaved again and I sank down to my boobs. I opened my eyes.
Monaghan was gone. Just the gun on the grain.
Brad started yelling, I started yelling, maintaining my death-grip on his hand.
The whirring auger slowed.
But no one came. Clutching the gun, I aimed towards the hatch and fired.
There was a sharp cry from above and the silhouette of a head appeared in the hatch.
‘Down here,’ I gasped.
‘Jesus, Mum,’ Dean groaned, ‘I don’t believe it. You’ve shot me in the bloody leg.’
Despite a nasty flesh wound, Dean managed to winch us out, one by one, from the silo, aided by the grain-train fellas. After he’d finished with the hoisting and a lot of shouting about safety, guns and the sheer stupidity of people who climb into silos, he finally let me explain.
Then, at last, Dean listened. Without interrupting, not even once.
He glared at me for a moment with those brown–black eyes, then got onto his radio to organise a police hunt for Aurora. He called up for tracker dogs, and helicopters and fifty cops from across two states.
‘Let me call the ambos for you, son.’
He gritted his teeth, clutching firmly onto his radio.
‘I’ll do it myself, Mum.’
Nothing I could do, just do my best to bandage up his bleeding leg.
Afterwards we waited in Dean’s divvy van for the ambulance. A magpie warbled. The early morning air was cool. I rubbed my arms.
Dean grunted, said a quiet, ‘Sorry, mate,’ to Brad. Then, his eyes too shiny, he whispered, ‘Why didn’t you tell me, Mum? A good thing Vern called me. You could have been killed.’
The ambos arrived and whizzed Dean off to Hustle. He phoned me later that morning, to tell me he’d arrested Terry, who he’d spotted from the ambulance en route to the hospital. Presumably Terry hadn’t been expecting to be arrested in a drive-by ambush by an ambo.
After three days of searching, a New South Wales cop and his dog, quite a nice dog, a friendly labrador called Trixie, found Aurora in the bush not too far from Ernie’s shack.
She was in not-bad shape, in the circumstances. Dehydrated and somewhat hysterical, as any person would be after witnessing her nanna’s and her brother’s murders and fleeing into hot, ant-infested mallee country for the best part of a fortnight. She was whisked away pronto to Muddy Soak by Ravi and a swarm of trauma counsellors.
Aurora was carrying an important letter. A letter Kev Pittering had written and Clarence had found hidden deep inside Kev’s briefcase. It was one of those if you’re reading this, I’ve been murdered kind of letters, stating Kev was off to meet Monaghan to call an end to the Pocket Money arrangement.
Monaghan had roped Kev in as his bookkeeper, back when he’d started his little racket in the eighties. But Kev had decided he was finally leaving the accounting trade to pursue his acting career. He hadn’t realised working with Monaghan was a job for life. Aurora also had Clarence’s book, if you could call it that. Four versions of chapter one in barely readable scrawl.
‘Terry’s hairs were all over that wool bag,’ Dean told me in a quiet voice, after he’d got out of hospital, leaning over his mound of vegetarian stir-fry. We were in Vern’s dining room and Vern had ducked out to the kitchen to get another bowl of salad. Thanks to Brad, there’s sixteen vegetarians now in Rusty Bore.
I nodded.
‘Terry said he thought that bag contained a bloody sheep, can you believe it!’ said Dean. ‘Monaghan said he’d run over a sheep and didn’t want the owner to know, in case they were upset. Incredible that Terry thinks we’re so gullible as to believe that for a second. And with his footprints all around her body.’
‘Yep, what sort of twit would confuse a dead woman with a sheep?’ Number of legs for a start. I picked at my stir-fry.
‘At least he’s admitted he helped move her body. Twice. And he insists it was Monaghan who set fire to your place.’
‘Well, I can half-believe that. Terry didn’t seem the arsoning type. He fixed my car door, after all.’
‘He was using you, Mum.’
I pushed my plate away. Stir-fry’s never been my favourite.
‘And if I have anything to do with it, he’ll do the maximum sentence for accessory,’ said Dean.
I don’t know what Dean was so upset about. It wasn’t him who’d slept with the man. Or who had lingering daydreams involving a fella with disappointed, faded blue eyes.
‘How long would that be, exactly?’ I kept my voice casual.
‘Long enough for you to bloody well move on.’
‘Why did Monaghan kill Mona?’ I said, not only to change the subject. This fact was still unclear to me. Clarence I could understand, since he’d found Kev’s letter and the Pocket Money file and been stupid enough to try to blackmail Monaghan. But what did Mona have to do with it?
‘Wrong place at the wrong time. He was probably aiming at Clarence. Lucky for Aurora she was outside in the loo when Monaghan arrived at the shack. He didn’t know she was there.’
Shame his nanna got in the way.
‘The bullet in Mona was definitely from Monaghan’s gun. And the ones in Ernie’s walls,’ said Dean.
Vern came back with the salad. ‘What I don’t understand is why he killed that Donald fella. Mind you, a lot of dodgy things probably went on in the back of that bloke’s van.’ He gave me a significant nod.
‘Aurora asked Donald for help after she saw him in the bush near Ernie’s. Monaghan had handcuffed Clarence to a tree.’ Dean passed me the overflowing bowl of salad. ‘Monaghan wanted the Pocket Money file. But Clarence couldn’t give it to him, since he’d lost the key to the gun cabinet.’
‘I told you Clarence was handcuffed to a tree. Didn’t I?’
A pause. ‘Maybe,’ said Dean, the closest he could get to an apology.
‘Why was the briefcase in the rubbish dump?’ I said.
‘Mona. According to Aurora, Mona thought Clarence was writing about her, about the Kota gas leak. So she dumped the case, thinking it contained his book, but he’d already emptied it.’
I took one lettuce leaf from the salad bowl. ‘Aurora should have gone to the police. To you.’
‘Come on, Mum. She saw a cop chase Mona and Clarence out of the shack while she hid in the outside toilet. And then found Mona dead and Clarence handcuffed to a tree. We weren’t exactly looking like the citizen’s friend.’
‘And why did she steal my car?’
‘She thought she and Clarence could get away, hide interstate. But your car ran out of petrol straight away. Don’t you fill your car, Mum?’
So Aurora’s failed getaway
attempt was my fault now? ‘And Donald?’
‘He was stealing eggs, part of the bird-smuggling racket the North-West Parrot Trust was running,’ said Dean. ‘Aurora saw him and begged him to buy a hacksaw so they could open Clarence’s handcuffs. And some food. Monaghan saw Donald and knew he had to get rid of him. So he got him drunk, crashed his van, pinning Mona’s death on Donald.’
Yep, those moist-wipes must have been for Aurora. She would have needed to moistly wipe the dust off her skin, after all that.
If Dean had only listened, Clarence and Donald might have lived. And Monaghan, of course. Although I wasn’t quite as sorry about him.
I zapped two Chiko Rolls in the microwave. It’s not the same serving takeaway in Vern’s old caravan. The impact on quality control is a worry. But good old Vern got that van cleaned up pronto, dredging it out from his shed once he got wind of the taskforce. He still sees many advantages in a merger, he tells me. I’ve told him I’m determined to rebuild.
‘My customers demand it, Vern. Once the insurance comes through.’ Me and my insurer are currently negotiating over the definition of a fire although personally I fail to see the area of ambiguity.
It had been a week since the silo and my split lip, bruised face and dog-bitten leg were almost healed. But it would take longer before I could sleep again. It wasn’t just the lumpiness of Vern’s couch. I kept waking at three a.m., heart jack-hammering, after dreams involving mad oozy eyes, guns and suffocation underneath a tonne of wheat. I’m probably too sensitive.
Between them, Clarence and Monaghan had turned the top-grade wheat in that silo into pig food. Still, their families gave them proper funerals. I didn’t go, I was too busy serving takeaway to the taskforce. And all the TV crews.
Good little eaters, those TV crews. The ABC even found some money for a documentary. All about Monaghan and what drove him to do it. A sympathetic type of show. The producer, Quinn, told me about it as he waited for his burger.
‘We’re focusing on the strain country police officers are under. And the terrible isolation of the psychopath. It’s an under-explored area.’ Quinn put his elbows up on the window frame.
I nodded, as I wrapped up his order. It didn’t sound to me like the show would have much of an audience.
