“Listen,” she said, quietly. “Sonny Steele’s been saying things. He says he’s going to get you, and he doesn’t care about . . .”
Her voice trailed away and she looked at the ground. Tom glanced down at his own bare feet.
“Tom?”
“What?”
“Where were you? Where did you go?”
Tom didn’t raise his head.
“You still don’t remember?”
“No.”
He glanced up at her. It was hard to tell whether she really believed him, but he found himself wanting her to.
“Sorry,” she said. “Anyway, just try and steer clear of Sonny.”
“I’ll try,” he said. “Thanks.”
“I just wanted to tell you that. Sonny’s so awful.”
“Yeah. He is.”
They stood awkwardly for a few seconds more.
“See you later then,” said Tom. “Thanks.”
“That’s all right. See you.”
He continued up the street with his hands in his pockets, but he had to use all of his powers to resist looking back at her over his shoulder.
10
When the sun came up Gibson stopped to stretch his legs and eat some breakfast. He was sitting in his car with a full belly, thinking he was ready to continue, when his head fell back against the seat and his eyes closed. He slept right through until mid-afternoon and then he woke up with a start, a stiff neck and a dry mouth. It took him a little while to work out where he was and what the hell he was doing there but then he started the car and pressed on, eager to make up for lost time. He drove on into the evening, passing through a number of small towns until he saw, far ahead, a faint flash of lightning under a band of darker cloud. He stopped the car and stood behind the opened door with his hand cupped around his ear to listen for thunder but he heard none.
“Long way off,” he muttered to himself. He jumped back into the car and pressed his foot down on the accelerator as far as it would go, speeding away down the road to chase the storm. He knew it was crazy, he’d seen the signs and knew what a kangaroo could do to the car if he hit one, but he didn’t slow down. The needle hovered around seventy, eighty, the engine roaring, the evening air blasting in through the window and against the side of his head. Sometimes the road veered away from the storm, sometimes he seemed about to slide right under it.
“Come on, you big bastard!” he shouted. “I’ve got you!”
After half an hour the road began to rise again into low hills and he charged up them, only lifting his foot when he’d reached the top and begun to sail down the long bends on the far side, the tyres squealing on the bitumen. He saw the faint lights of a town flickering ahead and below like a constellation before clouds descended and hid them. Lightning flashed and lit up the scrub—pale-trunked paperbarks—on either side of the road and then thunder cracked directly overhead. In the wake of the crash he turned off the ignition and let the car coast to a standstill. Lightning flashed almost continually now and the thunder was right on its heels, cracking and booming and making the car tremble on its springs. He got out and lay on his back in the road, its store of heat working its way up through his clothes. Fat drops of rain began to crash down around him. A cooler wind washed down through the storm clouds and he shivered despite the warmth beneath him. The drops built in number and became a deluge. He lay on the bitumen and laughed as the rain hit his face and then he lifted up his arms as the rain soaked him, closed his eyes and just lay there, thinking no thoughts.
The rain eased, then stopped, the storm over almost as soon as it had begun, the clouds rolling away, worlds without end above him once more. He felt that the rain had washed away the last faint traces of uncertainty and reluctance from him, and although he was unsure of the new persuasion to which he had subscribed—and what he might be required to forfeit to it—he knew he’d done the right thing in coming and he knew he’d found the purpose he’d been craving.
It was about half past nine when, after another inspection of the map, he headed west and inland. He couldn’t see much of the country in the darkness, but he was concentrating hard on keeping the car stable as he gunned down the quiet country roads, the tyres slithering around on the loose edges. He slowed over a crest and peered across to his left. The country spread out below was almost uniformly dark and broken only by the odd lonely light. According to the map he was close but he’d seen no sign. The road dropped down into a valley and he was wondering where Angel Rock might be hiding when he saw the sign for the turn-off to it. He was going so fast he had to slam on the brakes, the car eventually coming to a screeching halt a couple of dozen yards past the sign. Sitting in the middle of the road, the car slightly skewed, headlights spearing across an empty paddock, he listened to the engine tick over for a moment before backing up and turning. He drove for another half an hour along the valley floor and then he rounded a corner and Angel Rock appeared, spread out comfortably across the higher ground just to the west of a wide, dark river. There were maybe a couple of hundred houses and they all had the same pyramid-shaped corrugated-iron roofs, latticed verandahs, and neat little front yards. To the northwest a steep range of hills loomed, black against the starlit sky, and a rocky peak reared out of them, dominating the valley and town. The Rock, Gibson figured.
Gibson drove slowly into the town and then around it. A grid of streets, most ending against barbed-wire fences to the west and the river to the east. His headlights illuminated the eyes of cats and the odd dog as they went about their nocturnal duties. Moths spun like satellites around streetlights. He saw one or two old people sitting out on their verandahs, fanning themselves, but other than that the town seemed deserted. The main street was split in two lengthwise by a stretch of grass with two big fig trees at either end. There was a table, benches for people to sit, flowerbeds with no flowers. There was a bank, a butcher, a baker, a grocer, a newsagent with a barber’s pole by the door, a pub. Somewhere, he supposed, was an unhappy dentist and a kindly old doctor who made house calls. He could see why someone might want to leave the place and never come back. When he thought of Darcy here his stomach knotted up in anticipation and his hand slid out and settled on her bible on the seat beside him and he stroked it like a familiar until he was calm enough to continue.
He found the station easily enough. He pulled his suitcase out of the boot and walked up the path to the door and knocked. A tall, white-haired man in his fifties, wearing a singlet and grey work trousers, answered it.
“Gibson?”
“Yes.”
“Pop Mather. I spoke to you on the phone.”
Gibson held out his hand for the man to shake and very nearly regretted it, his grip was so strong. He followed him inside, weary and bleary-eyed, but not so tired that he failed to notice a framed photograph sitting on a buffet in the living room.
“Come up through the range, or in from the coast?” Pop asked.
“Ah, the range.”
“Good. Thought you might’ve missed the ferry if you’d come in by the coast. Meant to tell you.”
Gibson nodded, but he was staring at the photo, struck by the same visceral jolt of recognition he’d had before. Darcy Steele and another girl were sitting on the verandah rail of a house somewhere, their arms across each other’s shoulders, their bare feet and legs dangling. Darcy’s head leant against the roof post. Her lips were red, her cheeks peachblown, her hair sweeping down across her face. The other girl’s darker features and more reserved smile made her seem more serious, less . . . radiant, but that might have been an illusion. He knew well enough that photographs only ever contained a splinter of the truth or the whole box and dice.
“Couldn’t have looked any prettier,” said Pop. “Not even all gussied up.”
“Yours?”
“Yes. That’s Grace.”
“Have you told her yet?”
Pop nodded. “Yesterday, after you rang.”
“What about the parents?”
“Yes. They know.”
Gibson nodded. He put down the picture and Pop took his case from him and showed him to a spare room. He’d barely returned from the bathroom, undressed, put his head down on the pillow, before he was dead to the world and all it contained.
In the morning he watched Pop’s daughter as she came into the kitchen and sat down in a chair. Her eyes were very red and it was obvious she’d had little sleep.
“You all right?” Pop asked her.
“Yes.” Her voicebox had tightened up so much she could barely speak, her voice just a faint squeak.
“Mr. Gibson’s a policeman,” Pop continued, his voice low. “He’d like to ask you about Darcy.”
Grace nodded, then blew her nose.
“Grace, your father tells me Darcy was a friend of yours.”
She nodded. “We were best friends.”
“Pop says you haven’t seen her for a while, not since before Christmas.”
“No, I haven’t. I . . . I don’t know why. Mrs. Steele told me she was sick when I went to see her.”
Gibson nodded.
“Do you know why she . . . ran away?”
“No. I don’t know. Her parents are strict.”
“How are they strict?”
“She . . . isn’t . . . wasn’t allowed out except on Saturdays. And only to see me.”
“I see. When did you see her last then?”
“At the dance. The night Tom Ferry came home.”
“She seem . . . unhappy . . . at all?”
“Yes,” said Grace, wiping away a tear from her eye, “but she wouldn’t tell me why.”
“Did she ever talk about a man named Billy, or Father Carney?”
“She used to talk about Billy,” answered Grace, her eyes flicking between Gibson and her father. “He used to take her to look for bird’s eggs, things like that, when she was littler, when she was allowed out.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes. What’s he got to do with . . . ?”
“What about Carney?”
“He taught her Bible stuff when she was little.”
Gibson looked at her, at the fierce protectiveness in her eyes. Had Darcy’s life been taken by another he doubted she would have shown any mercy to the killer were she ever to judge him. She reminded him of one of those sad-looking stone angels in graveyards with their heads at a tilt, listening to heavenly song so highly pitched only they and dogs could hear it. Up there with the beating of bees’ wings, the fluttering hearts of the lovelorn—but altogether deaf to the appeals of the guilty. It didn’t matter. She seemed a brave kid and he fell immediately for her spirit.
“I don’t know that they’ve got anything to do with anything,” he answered, softly. “I just wanted to know if she was . . . afraid of them, or anyone else for that matter, that’s all.”
She chewed over his sentence. “No,” she said. “She never said anything to me like that. I didn’t think she was afraid of anything.”
He paused. He could tell she had a question of her own and he waited for it.
“Are you the one who found her?”
“No,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “but I was there.”
She looked at him a little awestruck, as if he knew mysteries. He could tell she wanted to ask something else—maybe a lot of things— but he could also see she didn’t quite have the courage yet. Finally she just nodded, barely, tears welling up again.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” said Pop. She looked up at him, wiping her eyes. He nodded to her and she pushed back the chair and walked from the room and as she did she looked back at Gibson over her shoulder. He wasn’t quite sure of the combination of emotions in the glance—sadness, guilt, anger, at least—but it seemed obvious she wanted something more from him than he’d given.
“Sorry about that,” he said to Pop, after she’d gone. “I thought she might . . .”
Pop held up his hand. “You want to go see Darcy’s folks now?”
“Ah, yes.”
Pop nodded.
“Is it far?”
“No.”
They headed out of town along an unsealed road, passing a knot of rusted iron sheds and then a wrecker’s yard. Cattle watched them as they passed, strings of saliva hanging from their mouths.
“What can you tell me about them?”
“Ezra’s hardheaded, a hard worker. Keeps to himself. Fay was the local beauty in her day—believe it or not. Ezra was a catch himself when he was younger. His father had high hopes for him, but then he died young, and Ezra had to stay on the farm instead of getting an education. Sonny—John is his real name—is the other child. Not the brightest boy in the world. Bit of a grub really, and a bully like Ezra. He’ll take over the farm, I expect.”
They drove for a couple more minutes and then Pop slowed the car and turned off the road. He gestured up the slope and Gibson peered out through the windscreen. Like the other farmhouses he’d seen, this one was set well back from the road and connected to it by a short, rough track. It was encircled by a hedge and a number of sheds in varying degrees of dilapidation. He got out of the car on Pop’s instruction and opened the gate in the fence, closing it again after Pop had moved the car forward. The closer they came to the house the more deserted it seemed. Curtains billowed out of open windows. A cat, sunning itself on a ledge, cracked open one eye, noted their approach, then shut it again.
“Ezra’ll be out back. I’ll go and find him. Why don’t you go and introduce yourself to Fay?”
Gibson nodded. Pop strolled away in the casual, laid-back manner he had that Gibson had already begun to note and register. He turned to the house and stepped carefully up the heavily weathered stairs. He rapped on the door and after a minute or so it was answered by Fay Steele. Gibson peered at her intently from behind the facade of his manufactured half-smile. Any similarity to Darcy—except for her eyes maybe—had all but faded. Her hair, tied back in a ponytail, was grey and stringy and as she stepped through the doorway and into the light he saw that her skin was greasy-looking and rough, her fingernails keeping half-moons of dirt beneath them. She wore a faded cotton dress and her breasts were pendulous under it, the nipples pointing to the floor like the tips of fingers.
“Yes?”
Her eyes were wide and glassy. So wide that Gibson could see his own dark silhouette in them, the bright yard behind him.
“My name’s Gibson. I’ve come about your daughter. About Darcy. I’m very sorry . . .”
“Ah. You better come in then. My husband’s—”
“Sergeant Mather’s gone to fetch him. I’d like to speak to you both.”
“Oh. All right then. Come in.”
It was dim inside the house and its smell—thick and rancid— closed in upon him immediately. The sitting room he passed through was furnished with a suite of high-backed armchairs, all except one piled high with stacked magazines and newspapers, Australasian Posts and Women’s Weeklys mainly, some garnished with shrivelled apple cores or spirals of orange peel. The ceiling was bedecked with dusty cobwebs and the carpet had worn through to its base of heavy twine. A huge television with a failing tube flickered in the corner. Drifts of cat hair softened the right angles where floor met walls. A pair of cats, then a half-dozen, trotted in silently to look at him, their tails upright, and began to rub themselves up against his legs. He pushed them away gently and kept up his inspection. The walls were empty but for one sallow print of a bush scene in a gilded frame and an old, faded portrait of a young soldier, rising-sun badge pinned to his slouch hat and shoulder. A colour photograph in a chrome frame sat on the same table that held the telephone. A younger Darcy. A school photo. She had the brown skin, freckles, and sun-bleached hair common to country children. A pretty oval face, the barest smile—as if she were just working one up when the photographer had caught her—and a clear, blue-eyed gaze which seemed it might grow more intense the longer he looked. He suspected the picture had only recently been framed and placed there.
&n
bsp; Fay showed him to a seat at the kitchen table then filled a kettle with water and set it on the stove. The wall behind the stove and the stove itself were both so speckled with congealed oil that they were almost uniformly yellow, and on the floor beside the refrigerator was a pool of gleaming black liquor, rendered down from God-knew-what. The fridge wheezed to a halt and then there was only the sound of the water in the kettle increasing in temperature. Fay Steele stood by it, gazing at him absently.
“Do you mind if I take a look at her room?”
Fay Steele’s eyes widened and then her hand fluttered up to her chin.
“Oh, well, I’d really rather—”
“I won’t be a minute. Please? Just a quick look?” He gave her his reassuring smile and used his reassuring tone.
“All right then,” she answered, breathily. “First on the right there.”
“Thank you, very much.”
Inside the room he found a chrome-framed bed with a crocheted bedspread over it and a wardrobe with most of its veneer springing off. Against the wall was a little white dressing table with a comb and a brush upon it and a chair underneath. A jewellery box with frilly tulle edging sat just under the oval mirror. He opened it and the ballerina inside stood to attention on her spring but no music played and she did not turn. Inside the box were a few plastic bangles, half a dozen marbles, some feathers, a bird’s egg. He took out a cat’s-eye marble and put it in his pocket and then he pulled open the two small drawers in the dressing table. They were both empty. He heard the kettle begin to sing and Fay to move. He opened the wardrobe door. There were her dresses, still hanging. He ran his hand across them, smelt the faint smell of girl. There were drawers built into the wardrobe and he pulled open the first one and sifted through the underwear it contained. There was nothing of significance, and nothing in the second or the third. Then he heard a heavy tread at the front of the house. He exited the room promptly and walked back down the hall.
Ezra Steele was a big man, even after he’d taken off his heavy gumboots and even after he’d sat down. He wore grey bib overalls, a check shirt, a shapeless hat, and he smelt faintly of cowshit. Gibson introduced himself and sat down in the chair opposite when Steele declined his hand. He waited, saying nothing, until Pop returned from the kitchen with Fay and a tray of tea and biscuits. Steele glared at him from under his black brows, his fingers tapping against the arm of the chair. Suddenly Gibson felt all at sea and so unsure of himself that he would have got up off his seat and walked out if Steele’s look hadn’t already pinned him. There was nothing for it but to continue.
Angel Rock Page 11
