Darkening Skies

by Parry, Bronwyn

  If things had been different … He cursed the circumstances that had brought her back into his life now, now when he had a cloud over his head, when he was bound here by honour and commitment to help Dungirri – his community – recover from traumatic years and rebuild its shattered identity. Even if he was not charged over Paula’s death, Jenn’s life and career lay elsewhere, and he was not free to be with her.

  He’d gripped the pages in his hand so tightly they’d creased in long untidy folds. He wished it was Flanagan’s neck he’d had his hands around.

  Did that make him little better than Flanagan? He didn’t know, but the anger and violence within him simmered and he had to deliberately focus to slow his breathing, to open his fists, to smooth out the papers and return to the others – to Jenn – with some semblance of calm.

  Gil arrived, bringing with him bread, steaks and salad from the pub kitchen, and he prepared a meal while the rest of them gathered around the table and shared progress and news.

  ‘Leah’s banging her head against a brick wall trying to get more resources on the ground,’ Steve reported. ‘So, tomorrow I’m officially back on the team. At least if I get shot in the line of duty tomorrow I’ll be covered by workers’ comp, but we’d better try to avoid the shooting stuff tonight, right?’

  ‘I’ll second that,’ Mark volunteered, re-joining them at the table. They’d put away computers, reshuffled seats for everyone to fit, and he took the vacant seat next to Jenn. Maybe he should have taken the one furthest away instead of being so close that their thighs were only inches apart and he could almost feel the warmth of her body. Every small move distracted him, and he had to concentrate to follow the discussion. But she was part of it, animated and engaged with the intellectual puzzle, despite her fatigue.

  ‘Jenn, I passed along your information about the women you’ve possibly identified,’ Steve continued, going through his notes. ‘Leah wants to visit them in the morning, and she wants you to go with her, Kris, as you’re the local sexual assault specialist.’

  ‘Did the forensic team find anything else at Wolfgang’s place?’ Jenn asked.

  ‘His artwork is neatly catalogued in cabinets in the studio. But there’s a storage space under the darkroom floor with a whole lot more photographs and negatives, and I doubt they’re his work. They’ll take some time to go through, but this is a copy of one that fell out of the pile while forensics were packing them up.’

  Steve passed the photo across the table to them and Jenn took it, placing it so Mark could see it.

  A black-and-white photo, almost cartoonish, with an oversized head added clumsily to the image of a beaten woman’s body, the face young, pretty … and familiar. Jenn made a small sound of shock, and with disgust Mark turned the photo face down, and shoved it back to Steve.

  ‘It’s Barbara Russell,’ he said, and Gil stilled for an instant at the bench, then spun around, knife in hand, and reached across Steve for the photo. ‘Just her face, edited on. Poorly edited.’

  Mark watched the knife gripped in Gil’s hand, but he had himself under control. Almost. If Flanagan had been there, he’d have been a dead man. And Mark wasn’t at all sure he wouldn’t have helped.

  ‘It’s a threat,’ Gil said harshly, tossing the photo back on the table. ‘You’ll probably find a copy in the doc’s papers somewhere. That’ll be how they gained his compliance.’

  He turned away again, but the knife clattered into the sink, and he grasped the edges of the bench, breathing through clenched teeth. Kris went to him and put her hand on his shoulder, then his arm came around her and pulled her close to his side.

  Glad for them and what they’d found together, Mark nevertheless had to stifle a wave of envy. Beside him Jenn held herself stiffly in her seat, closed off and unreachable. Except her intellect wouldn’t be silenced.

  ‘Maybe the doc knew,’ she said, thinking aloud. ‘Maybe he knew about the women and what went on at the club. Because that image would have a lot more impact if he knew how real it could become. I can’t imagine many women confiding in him, but if there’d been injuries, unwanted pregnancies, emotional distress he might have guessed something of it.’

  And done whatever he had to do to protect his daughter from the same fate. Like signing a blood-alcohol sample with the wrong name. Mark’s anger at the old doctor eased down a few notches.

  He still had questions about how Wolfgang had obtained – or stolen – those photographs and from whom, but they weren’t his main concern. Men who preyed on beautiful women were, and the need to protect the woman sitting beside him who’d become involved and wouldn’t step back from searching for answers. ‘Did you track down any more information on Gerard McCarty?’ he asked Steve.

  ‘Yes, I’m getting to that.’ Steve shuffled a couple of pages of notes. ‘Okay, McCarty left here not quite eighteen years ago – a couple of weeks after the accident. He transferred to a similar position in a larger branch of the same bank on the Gold Coast. He resigned from there three years later. Then he set up a business as a financial consultant and paid cash for a million-dollar house on forty hectares in the hinterland. He liked to entertain, was well respected and had interests in several property-development companies. He was questioned about the disappearance of a woman five years ago, brought along a top lawyer, refused a DNA test without a warrant, then walked out of the police station without being charged – and hasn’t been seen since. Her body was found in bushland a week later. And,’ he grimaced, ‘you don’t want the details of that.’

  Gil had resumed cooking and the steaks sizzled on the hot grill, making Mark’s stomach take a queasy roll.

  Gil put a salad bowl in the centre of the table and threw a glance at Steve. ‘After dinner,’ he said, with a slight emphasis on after, ‘see if there’s any connection between McCarty and Vanna Flanagan. She’s been up on the Gold Coast ever since she left Dan, which was around that time.’

  Mark watched Gil’s face. He’d been inadvertently involved in the business run by Vanna’s mafia brothers in the city, and had discovered their local connection. ‘Do you think McCarty got her caught up in this, too?’ Mark asked.

  Gil shrugged. ‘Maybe. I don’t know enough about her. But there’s a coincidence there. Rumour has it she took Dan to the cleaners in the divorce settlement. She certainly expanded her empire – the network of salons, spas, whatever you call them, across the country, and what’s now a large modelling agency.’

  Steve shoved his notes to one side. ‘The Feds have been looking into all of that in the investigation of the Flanagan businesses since the sons’ arrests. But she’s not involved in the family companies now; she came up clean.’

  Gil snorted.

  Jenn suddenly sat forward, her hands on the table. ‘What if we’ve been underestimating her? She’s a link. Her salon back then was probably a link. The place where Birraga’s wealthy women went, relaxed, unwound – and talked. She would know them all. McCarty would have known their financial status. Women aren’t always victims. Sometimes,’ her eyes locked on Steve’s and she used the words Jeanie had quoted earlier, ‘sometimes there are far more dangerous criminals than thugs like Dan.’

  It was after midnight, and only small sounds were audible in the quiet of the house. The rattle of a chain on the wooden veranda as one of the dogs changed position. Steve’s low, deep breathing from the couch in the living room. The sound of Mark turning in his sleep on the blow-up vinyl mattress. Only silence from the next room, where Kris and Gil slept.

  Jenn didn’t know what had woken her. She must have drifted off to sleep at last but it had taken a long time to still her brain enough to relax. Now she lay in Kris’s guest bed, the sheet half over her, and listened for any sound that didn’t belong.

  Frogs in the creek, the low call of a mopoke owl – years since she’d heard that – and the high-pitched buzz of a mosquito circling just outside her room.

  She pulled the sheet up over her bare arms and scratched an itch on her wri
st. A feasting mozzie. Yes, that would be enough to wake her. Nothing to worry about – except the itch. She turned over, settled the pillow and made sure the sheet protected her shoulders before she closed her eyes again.

  Explosion … fire erupting … flames, flames all around him … she ran, fell, pain in knees and hands and ankle … crawled, crying … couldn’t get to him … couldn’t save him … cried out again … and again—

  ‘Jenn? Jenn, it’s okay. You’re dreaming. You’re safe.’

  Quiet voice. A dark head, a weird green glow on the face … She closed and opened her eyes again. Mark. Mark in the dull light of the bedroom. The green glow from the power light on the printer.

  The nightmare still lurking in the cobwebs of sleep, she pushed herself up to sit and shook her head to try to wake up. ‘Sorry. Bad dream. Thought …’ Thought you were burning to death in a car. No surprises that her subconscious had thrown that at her.

  ‘I had one too,’ he whispered. ‘I was going to get a glass of water. Do you want one?’

  Her throat as dry as if she’d been trying to scream in her sleep, she nodded. ‘Thanks.’ Water would be good but … Bathroom. That would help her settle again. She tossed the sheet off and swung her feet to the floor, following him out the door.

  When she came back the green glow from the printer reflected off a glass left for her on the bedside table, and Mark stood silhouetted against the window, sipping from a glass in his hands, tall and muscular and yes, breathtaking in a rumpled T-shirt and jeans. The floorboards cool against her bare feet, she crossed to Mark and laid her hand on his arm.

  Aware of the others sleeping just metres away, she kept her voice to a whisper. ‘Thanks. You always were a rock when I needed you.’

  He smiled just a little. ‘Everyone needs someone to lean on once in a while.’

  ‘Who do you lean on?’

  ‘Friends. Kris. Ryan and Beth. You.’

  ‘I left. That’s not much of a friend.’

  He touched her then, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheek, the caress resonating deep within her. ‘You were there when I needed you, growing up. My parents were … distracted, but you believed in me, understood the things I cared about. You mattered, Jenn.’

  A small piece of her heart defrosted. And cracked in pain. ‘I wasn’t there for you after the accident. I had to go.’

  ‘I know. And you’ll go again.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Yes, she’d go. She took a step away from him. Better to keep her distance now and resist the temptation to lay her head against his shoulder. She didn’t need him, didn’t need the reassurance of his strength or the reminder of the affection and intimacy they’d once shared. She didn’t want the pain of leaving him again intensified by becoming too close. She’d learned the hard way, last time, that having memories of love didn’t make the parting easier to bear.

  At least he didn’t have the memories, and she didn’t plan on giving him new ones.

  ‘I’m sorry I woke you,’ she whispered, retreating to politeness.

  ‘You didn’t. Bad dreams woke me.’

  After too many disturbed nights and enough emotional turmoil to break a weaker man? Not surprising. ‘You need to sleep, Mark. You’re exhausted. We’re both exhausted, with too much scope for nightmares. Go back to bed and think of dogs and count your cattle and you’ll drift off.’ She gave him a light kiss on the cheek, noticing the sensuality of his unshaven jaw, the faint salty scent of maleness, and was hit hard by desire and the longing to slide into his arms and be surrounded by his strength.

  She took another step back. Go, she pleaded silently. Go and don’t let me give in to temptation to invite you to share this bed and hold me while we sleep.

  His fingers brushed her face again, and she almost wished he were flirtatious and cheeky like Steve because she could have dealt with that far more easily than this quiet intensity, the presence of him and his eyes focused on her. ‘You go back to sleep too, Jenn. I won’t be far away if you need me. If ever you need me.’

  He left the room, his footsteps silent on the wooden floorboards and she stayed by the window, staring out into the darkness.

  From the living room, she heard the faint rustle of the bedclothes, the soft squeak of the mattress against the floor as Mark lay down again. Alone.

  She went to her own bed, pulled the sheet up around her shoulders, rolled on to her side and curled up. Alone.

  Her choice, her decision, but regret curled up with her, and she didn’t sleep until she allowed herself to imagine being held, safe in the arms of a man who demanded nothing of her and who cared enough to let her go.

  He lay flat on his back, wide awake and staring at the century-old pressed-metal ceiling. The ornate floral pattern didn’t replace the image of Jenn’s face. Jenn, looking up at him, wide-eyed and undecided. She’d wanted him to stay. He’d wanted to stay. And yet …

  And yet he’d left her there. He hadn’t drawn her against him, held her and kissed her and comforted her, body to body.

  Sex? Yes, he thought about sex. His body thought about sex. But she didn’t want sex, and beyond a basic pheromone reaction, neither did he. Not right now. He wanted more than physical intimacy from her. Sex with her – making love with her – would be wondrous, but not without emotional intimacy. And emotional intimacy still scared her. She’d walled off her heart in self-protection decades ago and strode through life, needing no-one.

  He wasn’t in a position to offer her much, anyway, and maybe in a few days, when they’d tracked down the killer and untangled the old crimes and new, when the intensity receded to normal, maybe then he’d be able to put their relationship into its proper perspective – an old friendship, a fondness and affection for a woman he respected.

  He closed his eyes and let his mind relax, drifting towards sleep. In the semi-awake, semi-asleep stage the neurons wandered along their many paths, unmarshalled by conscious reason, freeing thoughts, ideas, memories and fears filed in various parts of his brain into a buzzing flicker of subconscious voices and images. Things to do. Parliamentary questions. His old dog, Sammy, loping across a paddock. Jenn, frowning over her homework. Insurance policies. Flames. A blue hair scrunchie caught up in a tangled cotton blanket. Sun streaming into the shearers’ kitchen and Jenn laughing and reaching back with one hand to drag her wet hair out of its scrunchie.

  His eyes shot open again, and he tried to grasp the wisps of memory. Jenn – yes he remembered that day in the shearers’ kitchen. Sammy – much loved, long gone, his marker a cairn of stones and a painted tile. The scrunchie, in the room in the shearers’ quarters he’d set up as a study and bolthole. The old camp bed he lay on while reading and listening to music, the desk with his books.

  He could see himself standing there, holding the scrunchie, puzzling over its presence. It took a moment to pin the memory down. In those first few days home from the hospital, his brain was still healing from the injury and sometimes foggy, making it harder to come to terms with Paula’s death, with the gaping hole in his memory, with Jenn’s absence and with the news that he’d become Paula’s boyfriend. A scrunchie from a girl’s hair caught up in the rumpled blanket? The only conclusion to draw at the time was that he’d lost his sense and maybe even his virginity with Paula in those days he couldn’t remember.

  But Jenn remembered those days, and the only girl he’d ever dreamed about sleeping with, making love with back then, was her. Paula had never featured in his youthful fantasies, and he doubted he’d ever featured in hers.

  Whereas Jenn … Jenn still featured in his dreams. Every few months through all those years, he’d woken in the night, having dreamed of her in his bed, in his arms, in his life. There’d been other women every now and then, even a couple of relationships, but he’d never dreamed of those women the way he dreamed of Jenn.

  He turned over and tried to relax the tension in his body. All this time he’d told himself that he’d dreamed of Jenn because he saw her na
me in the newspapers, her face on the television. That was all.

  He must have slept, because he woke suddenly in the first light of dawn to a car’s engine revving in the street, a fast brake, and the dogs on the veranda barking in warning.

  Steve swore, car doors slammed outside and footsteps sounded on the veranda steps, Dash barking loudly, Maggie growling.

  Alert and wary, Mark rolled off the air mattress and pushed to his feet as someone knocked hard and repeatedly on the front door.

  ‘Officer, please, it is urgent. Please open.’

  Kris hurried past and joined Steve near the front door as Jenn came out of the bedroom. Mark gently pushed her back, out of the line of sight of the door. Gil came and stood beside them.

  Kris checked through the spyhole and nodded at Steve. ‘It’s okay. It’s a couple of tourists I’ve met.’

  The young couple stood on the doorstep, dishevelled and tense. The young man spoke first, his English accented with a soft Scandinavian lilt. ‘Officers, there is a murder. A man shot. At Ghost Hill campground. Two hours ago, but we hid, could not come earlier. There was a car, and shouting, and then the gunshots. The killers did not leave straightaway, so we waited in hiding. When they did, we went to help the man – but he was dead. We did not touch, we left him, came straight here, but see this.’ The young man passed his phone to Steve. ‘I took his photo. We do not know his name, but perhaps you know him?’

  Steve looked hard at the phone image, then passed it to Kris. Mark saw her frown, studying it for a moment before looking back at him. ‘Mark, you remember faces well.’ She handed him the phone.

  In death, the man’s face was slack, sightless eyes staring up beneath sparse grey hair, jowls fat around his neck. In his sixties perhaps, or older. Mark tried to imagine the face with movement and life, and recognition crystallised.