Darkening Skies

by Parry, Bronwyn

  ‘They wouldn’t need to know,’ Kris pointed out. ‘There’s probably a thousand sites on the internet with instructions.’

  Jenn’s fingers gripped tightly on her pen. The heat of the room pressed in on her, and she had to fight the instinct to run, to get out of there. ‘Someone knows,’ she said, and even to her own ears her voice sounded choked. ‘Someone around here knew, well before the internet existed.’

  Steve and Kris waited, eyes on her, but Mark’s hand rested on her shoulder, connecting with her, giving her strength. In the face of disbelief and threats she’d stayed silent for more than twenty years. But now it mattered, now she had influence and respect, and with the spotlight on past events the truth might be uncovered. As long as she had the courage to crack open old wounds and speak out.

  ‘My parents died in a car-bomb explosion. Just up the road at the showground. My father knew explosives from his army work, and the Coroner ruled it as a murder–suicide. I was only twelve years old, and no-one believed me that it couldn’t have been.’

  She’d never believed … so that was the reason for the forbidden topic of her parents’ death. He’d only been thirteen when the wild-eyed, too-wary girl moved into Mick’s cottage and started to catch the school bus with Paula. Be very gentle with her, his mother had said, and he read the local papers and knew the stories going around – that Peter Barrett hadn’t been himself when he’d brought his wife and daughter from the Holsworthy army base to Dungirri for a Christmas family visit, so despondent that he’d rigged his car to explode.

  So, Mark had been polite and friendly to the new girl, avoiding any mention of the incident, and even threatening to use his fists a couple of times on schoolmates who tried to taunt her. But it was months before she’d begun to let anyone, even Paula, see beyond the hard shell of emotional armour. The only time Mark had made any comment about her parents’ deaths, a few years later, she’d responded coldly that he had no idea what he was talking about.

  A heavy concern for a young girl to carry, alone. And she still carried it, behind the forced toughness that protected her from the world. That protected her from the hurt of caring. That kept her alone.

  Three months ago, before Gil’s return to Dungirri and the exposure of the district’s dark underside, before Jenn had walked back into his life, he would have continued to believe the Coroner’s report about the death of Peter and Susannah Barrett. But now … He kept his attention fully on Jenn, only peripherally aware of Steve and Kris on the other side of the table. ‘You believe they were murdered?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes. I was there.’ Her voice stayed flat, dead. ‘We’d camped at the showground over Christmas. Jim lived just across the road back then. It was early morning and we’d packed up ready to go. Mum went to dump the rubbish in the bins and I went to the loo. As I was walking back I heard Dad call out, “Come, on honey, we’ve got to get on the road,” as he got into the car. And then it exploded. I was thirty metres or more away, but Mum was much closer. And Dad … I saw—’ She stopped, swallowed hard. ‘He didn’t stand a chance.’ Her breathing rapid, she shoved her chair back and stood at the small window, hugging herself as she stared out.

  Mark exchanged glances with Steve and Kris, but they stayed silent, giving her a moment. Although he’d always known she’d been there at the time, he couldn’t imagine seeing it, watching a parent die in that way. No wonder she’d withdrawn, refused to talk about it. And no wonder that his close escape this afternoon had distressed her. She didn’t have to imagine what could too easily have happened.

  She turned abruptly to face them, blue–grey eyes burning with feeling. ‘If he wanted to blow us all up, why didn’t he wait twenty seconds longer until we were in the car with him? Why explosives, when he could have shot us, or killed us quietly in any number of ways? He was a career soldier, for God’s sake; he knew how to kill effectively. A car bomb set off prematurely doesn’t make sense on any level. Except murder.’

  Except murder. The little Mark had known about the incident shifted into a new light. The Flanagan family’s intimidation and corruption business stretched back decades. Given the suggestions of vice, sex and perhaps blackmail going back further – to before he was born – perhaps the Barretts’ deaths did warrant review. ‘You’re right. It doesn’t make sense. But is it linked to any of these other issues? Kris, Steve – can we get hold of the reports from the time?’

  ‘The Coroner’s report will be available, but it might take time,’ Steve said. ‘I don’t think they’re on computer that far back.’

  ‘You said no-one believed you,’ Kris asked Jenn in her straightforward but respectful way. ‘Did the police interview you?’

  Jenn dragged a strand of hair back, sagging against the wall by the window. ‘I remember a policewoman at the hospital, but I was pretty distraught. She came again the next day with a detective but … well, looking back now, their questions were all leading questions. My parents had been arguing, hadn’t they? My dad was in a bad mood, wasn’t he? I was just a kid, though, and I didn’t realise for a while that everyone was blaming Dad.’

  Kris winced. ‘You didn’t speak to anyone else? Your uncles? A counsellor? A teacher?’

  ‘Mick. Once.’ Bitterness hardened her words. ‘He told me to shut the fuck up and that if I spoke about it again he’d have me locked up as a loony. I saw the school counsellor once. She told me I was making up stories because I didn’t want to believe my dad had tried to kill me and I had to accept it. Jim …’ She shook her head. ‘I don’t know what Jim thought. He just said things had got complicated for Dad, but the best thing I could do for him and Mum was to leave it, get on with my life.’

  Complicated? An ambiguous term from a man who, in Mark’s experience, had always been honest and didn’t mince words.

  ‘The Coroner’s report won’t be much use,’ Jenn continued. ‘I requested a copy years ago. According to his commanding officer, my father had suffered mood swings and irritability since returning from a UN mission in Afghanistan a month before his death. It was years before the war, a mine-clearing mission after the Russians pulled out. My parents’ marriage was under some strain, and there were witnesses here who said he was acting out of character and argumentative.’ Tense, shaking with constrained emotion, she pushed herself away from the wall. ‘I need some fresh air.’

  Mark rose to go with her but she shook her head as she passed, and he let her go.

  Steve waited until her footsteps receded before he asked, ‘What do you reckon, Mark? Do you remember much about it?’

  Restless, he went to the window she’d been standing by only moments before, the security grille and mesh blurring the view of the Memorial Hall next door. ‘I’m only a year older than Jenn. My parents and I were visiting my grandfather in Lightning Ridge for Christmas when it happened. I remember a fair amount of hushed talk, conversations broken off suddenly when I came into the room.’ And now he wished he’d been the kind of kid to eavesdrop – or at least to push for more answers. ‘I stayed with my grandfather for another few weeks, as I usually did over summer. When I came home, Jenn had come to stay with Mick’s family in the cottage at Marrayin, and my mother asked me to be kind to her. All the talk among the Dungirri kids was that her father had killed himself and her mother, and that he’d tried to kill her. I felt pretty bad for her.’

  ‘Did you know her parents?’ Steve asked.

  ‘Not really. He’d joined the army and left before I was born. They’d visited town a couple of times. I remember Jenn at a Dungirri Christmas Tree party once – we were maybe eight, nine years old.’ Funny how he’d noticed her, even then. A quiet, pretty girl with brown plaits; she’d joined in a few of the games with her cousins but then drifted to the shade of a tree, absorbed in the book she’d received from the Santa who’d visited the party.

  Steve took notes. ‘Do you know who her parents’ friends here were?’

  ‘I don’t remember much at all. Peter seemed more like Jim than Mick. Rel
iable, steady. Her mother – I can recall her sitting with some of the older women at that Christmas party. Esther Russell, Eleni Pappas, Jeanie Menotti—’ The mention of the last name sparked a thought. ‘We should ask Jeanie.’ He indicated the photos, still spread on the table. ‘We should ask her about all of this. She’s been here all her life, and people trust her, confide in her. She doesn’t gossip, but it may be that she’ll have some more pieces of the puzzle.’

  ‘I was thinking the same thing,’ Kris said. ‘I’ll go and call her, see if she can come down.’

  Would his mother have confided in Jeanie? About sex and bondage and perhaps blackmail? He doubted it, doubted she would have shared that kind of secret with anyone – except, perhaps, his father.

  He closed his eyes, everything that had once seemed solid in his youth shifting now he viewed it from a different perspective. His parents were close, loved each other … but what if the underlying stress that had always characterised their relationship stemmed not from financial worries or the demands of running a large enterprise, but from something far more personal?

  The image of his mother haunted him. Bondage and discipline, dominance and submission – some couples might seek that kind of edge in a relationship, might be happy, might love those roles, but every instinct said that his parents weren’t among them. Respect, honour, fidelity, love, compassion, service – those were the values they lived by, and in everything they’d been equal.

  He clenched his fists tight on the window sill, anger burning, threatening his control. Someone must have compelled his mother to that ultimate submission, and he needed to know who, why and how – and he needed to see them pay for it.

  Wolfgang’s photos and words implicated Dan Flanagan, or at the very least suggested his involvement. Although the police had yet to come up with hard evidence, Mark believed Flanagan was responsible, through his sons and associates, for decades of extortion, corruption and blackmail.

  The possibility that the extortion had extended to sexual services affecting his mother and other women sickened him, angered him. But if Peter and Susannah Barrett had been murdered, if Flanagan was somehow responsible for that and for the shadows Jenn had carried in her eyes since she was twelve years old, then he deserved nothing short of the harshness of life in a maximum security prison, and Mark would do everything in his power to make that happen.

  THIRTEEN

  Jenn sat on the back step of Kris’s place, rubbing the ears of Rosie the dog, who, after some reservation, had come to lie close to her. The soft warmth of Rosie’s fur, the gentle pressure of the canine body against her hip and the simplicity of patting a trusting dog began to work their calming effects on her whirling emotions.

  She’d doubted her father. The realisation hit hard. On one level she’d believed in his innocence all along, but beneath that … at some point in her twenties she’d started to doubt, and she’d not pursued the issue as an adult. He had come home from Afghanistan a changed man. It was supposed to be a training mission, to train local forces in ordnance recognition and basic mine-clearance techniques following the end of Soviet rule. But in the couple of weeks between his return and their Dungirri visit, she had memories of him telling his mates, with the macho, laugh-it-off attitude of so many men, that there’d been a few close calls. His hands shook sometimes, he took to roaming the house at night and although he tried to be happy, even at twelve she’d recognised it as a performance.

  Post-traumatic stress? Possibly. Probably. Maybe his army records could tell her. The evidence given by his commanding officer in the Coroner’s report certainly suggested it. And perhaps that’s why she hadn’t pursued it. That, and because it would have meant returning to Dungirri, and she hadn’t been ready to do that.

  But the arguments between her parents had only started during those few days in Dungirri over Christmas. Rosie nudged her hand, reminding her to keep patting. She dug her fingers into the soft fur again, massaging gently while she tried to think, to put things in order. Those arguments – they’d been subdued, disagreements rather than fights, frustration rather than anger, her mother’s patience stretching thin. Hushed exchanges when they thought Jenn was out of earshot or asleep. Some tension between them, but not enough to erase all their smiles, their tender touches. Her mother had always had a nurse’s faith in the importance of touch, of physical connection, and she’d taught her tough soldier husband the power of gentleness.

  Now Jenn thought about it, whatever issue worried them, it wasn’t marital strife. That last night, after she’d gone to bed, she’d seen them through the mosquito flap, standing together in the moonlight, holding each other, laughing lightly, kissing long and deeply. Joy and contentment, not despair or depression. She’d fallen asleep happy.

  Eight hours later they were both dead.

  ‘How could anyone think it of him, Rosie?’ she murmured. ‘How could I have doubted him?’ The dog sat up, licked her face and Jenn snuggled her cheek into the fur, her arm around the gentle animal. ‘He loved her, Rosie. He loved me. No way could he have wired the car to kill us and then kissed her like that.’

  She stayed there, hugging the dog, the old confusion and uncertainty dissolving. And although fresh sorrow for her parents and their cut-short lives welled, she didn’t need to cry. They’d lived and loved and laughed, and now she had those memories back, untarnished, unshadowed.

  Except for the knowledge that her father’s reputation had, in his death, been maligned. That, she would restore. Once they’d untangled the murky past, once they’d found the truth about Paula’s death and Mark was safe, then she’d keep digging and asking questions and working to clear her father’s name. She had the skills, the position and the persuasive powers to make the authorities sit up and take notice. Rosie licked her face again, as if in agreement with her thoughts.

  The sun had shifted, eating away the shade of the porch, and the heat prickled on her skin, hot on her head and Rosie’s fur.

  ‘Come on, Rosie girl. I’ll move you to the end there, where it’ll stay shady.’

  She refastened Rosie’s chain to another post a metre away, and moved the water bowl close, giving her another pat.

  Standing here on the back porch, she could see the back of the Memorial Hall next door, and beyond it the creek, curving around the edge of the Dungirri scrub that butted close to town. Scrub Road ran north from the main street along two short blocks of houses, past the old O’Connell house on the corner of Mill Road and on to the vast dry forest that had, when she’d lived here, given Dungirri a timber industry – and double the current population. That the town still survived after the timber mill’s closure surprised her. That people voluntarily stayed – people like Mark, like Paul and Chloe, Beth and Ryan, Andrew and Erin – perplexed her.

  She’d left the back door open, and Rosie stiffened as Maggie and Dash barked at the sound of a vehicle approaching. Through the screen door she heard Mark’s command to the dogs to lie down, and they quietened.

  ‘Jenn?’ She heard the concern in his voice, and the hesitation. She went back inside and met him in the kitchen.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. I am. Rosie and I have been getting acquainted.’

  He stood a metre from her but his smile touched her, as if he understood how soothing the quiet time with Rosie had been. ‘Good. That’s Leah Haddad arriving. She wants to do a formal interview with me. Will you be okay for a while? Kris said to help yourself to coffee or food.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. I might …’ She might what? She wanted more solid information before she saw Haddad again. ‘I might go up and see Beth. She’s in the old O’Connell place, isn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Can you tell her what’s happened? She’ll want to know.’

  ‘I’ll tell her. Ryan – I was surprised when Jim told me they’d married.’ The sweet, shy girl and the rough-lad-turned-boxer who’d been only marginally less on the outer than Gil Gillespie when they were all kids. ‘Is he … do
you trust him, Mark?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. I doubt that Beth will know anything about Bohème, although if there were any rumours circulating among our mothers’ friends she may have heard something. But Ryan’s old connections go a little deeper into Birraga’s rougher side. He may have heard things.’

  ‘I’ll ask – but don’t worry, I’ll be discreet. I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything from your parents yet?’

  He shook his head, and the strain showed in the tightness around his eyes. ‘No. I just checked my messages, but there’s nothing.’

  She’d changed her sandals for walking boots at the hotel earlier, and they provided firm support for her ankle so that it only protested lightly on the walk down Scrub Road, four hundred metres or so. Past the corner of Spring Street, where she’d endured a year in the miserable house after Mick’s dismissal from Marrayin. Past the park at the waterhole, where the town’s teenagers had gathered on summer evenings. Where Mark and Paula had pretended to be an item; where Gil Gillespie’s daughter apparently had been conceived, somewhere in the trees beyond.

  The old timber house that Bella O’Connell and her father used to live in had changed in the intervening years, but the roses he’d planted for his wife in the shade of a vine-covered trellis were still there. Roses in Dungirri’s hot climate had always struck Jenn as a grandly romantic but impractical gesture. They’d proved her wrong, though, surviving more than thirty years.

  She could hear voices and the high-pitched laughter of children coming from the backyard, but she hardly knew Ryan, and hadn’t seen Beth in years until this week – so instead of opening the gate and walking uninvited in to the yard, she rang the bell at the front door. Beyond the security screen the door was open, the short passageway dull compared to the bright sunlight outside.