Red Dirt Country

by Fleur McDonald

  ‘Miss Mitchell painted them at daycare this morning. Dad didn’t think it was us when he came to pick us up either.’

  ‘Miss Mitchell has some hidden talents. We’ll have to get her painting faces at the next show,’ Kit said. He turned his attention to Jamie. ‘How’s it going, Crow?’ he asked using Jamie’s nickname.

  ‘Good, mate. Just on the way home. Picked up a heap of cattle lick blocks and some poly pipe. Got some new land we need to get water to.’

  ‘Got some good help out there?’ Kit asked as he straightened up.

  ‘Yeah. Couple of young blokes who seem pretty switched on. Need another one for the next muster, but we’ll have to get through the Wet first. Not that there’s any sign of it.’

  ‘Still real early, Crow. Don’t panic yet.’

  ‘I know. But last year was drier than normal. Feed’s getting a bit scarce. Bought a few truckloads of hay from down south and it cost me about half a year’s profit!’

  ‘Yeah. I know things are a bit short. But it’s not real bad yet.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Now, mate, while I’ve got you here,’ he glanced around to see where the kids were, but they were in the kids’ corner playing with toys and the young girl behind the counter seemed to be more engrossed in flicking through a glossy magazine than listening to what Kit was about to say. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve noticed any unusual tracks on your place? Or anything out of the ordinary at all?’

  ‘As in vehicle tracks? Get ’em all the time. Tourists looking for a place to camp. Drives me spare.’

  ‘I’d say more single vehicle tracks—you know, like a ute. In strange places, around bores and troughs and the like.’

  Jamie squinted as he thought. ‘Can’t say I have. What sort of trouble are you having?’

  Kit shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his heels. ‘Not trouble as such. Just some unexplained happenings, I guess. Found the carcass of a freshly killed beast on the side of the road a couple of weeks ago. Looked like a bush butcher’s job.’

  ‘That happens from time to time.’

  ‘Yeah, it does.’ He paused as the door opened and another man walked in. Boyd Shepard. A bloke who used to be a local but had shifted further south. Seemed he couldn’t stay away from the place. He nodded to him before turning back to Jamie. ‘Not missing any cattle?’

  ‘Haven’t seen any signs of that.’

  ‘Well, that’s good.’ Kit nodded. ‘I’d best get on. Only came in to grab the Farm Weekly.’

  The girl behind the counter looked up. ‘I’ve still got ’em out the back. Haven’t put ’em out on the shelf yet. Been run off my feet.’ She closed the magazine and walked towards the office at the back of the shop. ‘I’ll just grab you one.’

  Kit and Boyd exchanged glances. Perhaps if she hadn’t been reading the gossip pages …

  ‘Better make that two, love,’ Jamie called after her.

  Walking over to the other side of the shop, Kit stood next to Boyd Shepard. ‘What’s going on, Shep?’ he asked quietly, his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Not much,’ he answered, not looking at Kit.

  ‘Up here for a reason?’

  ‘Nah, mate. Just the usual.’

  Kit nodded. ‘Guess I’ll see you a bit later then.’

  Boyd nodded and Kit walked back to the counter and waited for the Farm Weekly.

  Ten minutes later and he was back outside in the glare of the sunlight. He adjusted his sunglasses and hat and this time walked towards the farm merchandise store.

  Two small Aboriginal boys ran along the street in bare feet, a can of Coke their hands, and an old-timer sat under the shade of a tree, a cigarette hanging from his mouth. The sun was warm enough to raise a sweat and bring the bush flies out. They clustered around Kit’s forehead.

  Inside the store, he was greeted warmly again. Without too much chat, Kit left his order and then wandered down to the police station. He knew that his old mate, Glenn King, would be shutting the police station for an hour while he went to lunch. Kit intended to buy him lunch today.

  His high-top boots clicked on the cement as he walked up the steps to the station, and just as he reached the top, Glenn came out, a large bunch of keys in his hand.

  The grey-haired man dressed in uniform stopped when he saw Kit and a smile spread across his face. ‘Well, well, well, if it isn’t the king of Boogarin Shire! How are you, old mate?’ Glenn held out his hand and they both shook hard.

  ‘Been a while, Kingy. Want a feed?’

  Kit watched as Glenn’s eyes narrowed just slightly. He knew Kit wasn’t here on a social visit.

  ‘Sure. I’ll lock up and then how about we ask Mae over at the pub if she can find us a place where we can talk privately?’

  ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  They sat at the back of the dining room. Being a Monday, there weren’t any other people looking for lunch, so they had the place to themselves.

  Kit ordered his usual steak with chips, and Glenn ordered a beef parmi.

  ‘Thanks, fellas,’ Mae said as she jotted the orders down. ‘Any drinks?’

  ‘Not for me,’ Kit said. ‘I’ve still got business to get on to after I’ve finished here.’

  ‘And you’d better not have one, Senior Sergeant Boss Man,’ Mae said with a wink as Glenn shook his head too. She pushed her pen behind her ear and smiled at the men. ‘Won’t be long.’

  Mae walked away, pushing open the kitchen door and disappearing into the smell of deep-fried food and steak.

  Kit noticed Glenn watching her with raw appreciation and raised his eyebrows.

  ‘What’s going on there?’ he asked, picking up his fork and turning it around in his large fingers.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Looks like you’re salivating.’

  Glenn looked sheepish. ‘That obvious?’

  ‘Only to me.’ He paused. ‘Guess it’s pretty lonely for you now?’

  Glenn’s wife had died two years earlier and Kit knew her ashes still sat next to Glenn’s bed, along with a photo of them both on their thirtieth wedding anniversary.

  ‘I hate it. Hate going home to an empty house. Cooking my own dinner and having to sit there without anyone to talk to.’ He put his elbows on the table. ‘Anyway, you didn’t come into town to talk to me about that. What’s up?’

  Kit wanted to comment on what Glenn had said, offer some kind of support, but he knew that his friend didn’t want him to. Glenn had told him as a fact and that was all. Instead he nodded and tapped his fingers on the table before saying in a quiet voice: ‘There’s some strange happenings beginning to get about. I reckon we’re losing some cattle.’

  Glenn sat back, rubbing his chin. ‘Losing as in lost or stolen?’

  Kit thought Glenn sounded hopeful at the ‘losing’ part. ‘I wouldn’t like to assume, but probably more the latter.’

  ‘Damn! Been a while since that happened around here. What makes you think that?’

  ‘Well, there’re a few tracks that I can’t account for on fence lines and boundaries. Looks like the fence has been dropped and cattle run over the top of it. Wondering if someone has been mustering wide.’ As he said it, he imagined a chopper taking a wide arc out around his land and seeing what cattle were close by that they could run over the fence. Calves that didn’t have a brand on them were prime targets. Usually he didn’t run cleanskin cattle close to the boundary’s fences for that very reason. Neighbours and musterers couldn’t always be trusted.

  He knew of mustering contractors who had taken a cut of the sales when the cleanskins had been sold by the owners, so they were encouraged to muster wide. Not all mustering companies were like that, but in recent times, when diesel prices and wages were high and so were cattle prices, it added a bit of extra incentive to be dishonest.

  And once cattle were marked with someone else’s brand, it was difficult to prove they belonged to you.

  ‘I see.’ Glenn frowned. ‘Sho
uld I ask what side of the property you’re talking about?’

  Kit raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you even have to ask? And there was a beast used as a ration on the side of the road. Professional bush butchering job.’

  ‘I had hoped that had all stopped for good.’ Glenn folded his arms across his chest.

  ‘A leopard can’t change its spots.’

  Chapter 5

  As Dave pulled up in front of the stock squad office in a suburb on the outskirts of Perth, a buzz of excitement ran through him. He was here.

  Finally, here.

  He had achieved what he had set out to do all those years ago, after he’d been kicked off the farm. Getting his head around the fact he wasn’t going to be able to farm had taken some time. He’d tried working for someone else, but it had been a bust; the job as a farmhand hadn’t suited him. Often he’d had better ideas than the owner—or at least so he thought—and he’d found it impossible not to tell them what to do, especially when he could see a better way of doing things. Mostly, his employers hadn’t liked his forthrightness. He’d decided he needed to find a job that let him work with animals and be interactive with farmers and graziers, but in some other capacity.

  A newspaper article had caught his eye just after he’d left his last seeding job; twenty-five sheep had been stolen from a property out of Albany and the blokes had been caught red-handed at the saleyards after transporting them in a decked-out horse float. Somehow, they’d turned the float into a two-deck sheep crate, and they’d been discovered when detectives had noticed urine and sheep shit coming out of the holes along the bottom of the floor. Now, it wasn’t unusual for hobby farmers to cart their stock in unconventional ways, but not having the right paperwork was more than a bit of a problem. Dave had followed the case all the way through until the men had been charged and sentenced.

  The case had piqued Dave’s interest and he had made some enquiries about how to become a detective … Now here he was, standing out the front of a nondescript white house which was headquarters for the Stock Squad WA.

  To this day, he still bought the Farm Weekly and kept current with what was going on in farming—he knew what lambs were worth and whether grain prices were good. He had stayed up to date with some of the stock agents’ names across the state—they didn’t know him, but he knew who they were.

  He was informed.

  Taking a deep breath, Dave opened his car door and walked up the path, his palms sweating. He pushed open the door and went inside.

  His first impression was the office was busy. There was a bit of noise—typing and phones ringing—and two detectives were talking to each other in front of a whiteboard. There were another two people at desks, looking at paperwork, and one on the phone. Dave assumed the one on the phone was Bob, because he was older than the others and his desk, at the front of the room, was the largest.

  Bob turned at the sound of the door and smiled, waving Dave in.

  ‘Gotta go, mate,’ he said to the person on the other end of the line. ‘Our new celebrity detective has turned up.’ He slammed the phone down and called out, ‘G’day, Dave. At least, I guess you’re Dave and not some random who’s walked in off the street! We’re pleased to have you.’ He got up and came towards him, holding out his hand.

  The others turned around and looked at Dave; he felt like a deer in the spotlight. Holding up his hand he gave a bit of wave and then grasped the man’s hand.

  ‘Bob Holden,’ the man confirmed. Bob turned to the rest of the investigators. ‘This bloke,’ Bob said in a reverent tone, ‘is Dave Burrows. He single-handedly took down a mustering company who were stealing cattle in Queensland. And he took a bullet for his effort.’ He pumped Dave’s hand up and down again, ignoring Dave’s grimace as his shoulder got a workout. ‘So you fellas be respectful and nice.’

  The other detectives thumped the table and whooped, before getting up to make themselves known to Dave.

  A whirl of names: ‘Perry Randall, great to know ya.’

  ‘Toby Parke, but everyone calls me Parksey.’

  ‘Blake Murray.’

  The last one to introduce herself was Lorri Prior. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you,’ she said. ‘Looking forward to working with you.’

  Dave was impressed by the strength of her handshake. ‘I’m really glad to be here,’ he said to them all.

  Bob took charge. ‘This will be your desk, right alongside me, Dave,’ he said, indicating a desk in the corner. It faced out towards the other detectives and Dave realised he’d be able to see the whole room, which suited him well. There was a computer and phone on the top and what looked like a case file. It had a couple of handwritten notes scrawled on the outside, but he couldn’t read them from where he was. His fingers itched to pick the folder up and flick through it, as well as read what was on the whiteboard. He just wanted to get started!

  ‘We’re not that busy at the moment. You and I’ll take a run to the saleyards tomorrow. Got the sheep sales on in the morning. Check a few weigh bills and chat to a few of the farmers and truckies. You’ll need to meet the stock agents and auctioneers—get some relationships going with those blokes. They’re easier to get to know than the farmers, you’ll find.’ Bob indicated for Dave to walk with him. ‘Come on, I’ll show you over the place.’

  He took another breath then continued as they walked outside. ‘Farmers are a funny breed of cattle, you see. Hard to get to know. Play their cards pretty close to their chest. You’ll have to bring them flowers and buy ’em a beer to get ’em to open up most of the time. Treat ’em nice and all.’

  Dave nodded. ‘Yeah, I’ve known a few of them. More often than not they don’t like to report stolen things.’

  ‘Dead right there, mate.’ Bob pointed at a large iron shed that took up most of the back area. ‘Now this is the storage shed. Need it big so we can fit in all the equipment. You’ll see we’ve got our motorbikes and other paraphernalia in here. We’re each responsible for maintaining our own machinery. We’ll supply you with your own ute; it’ll be kitted out with everything you need: two-way radio, scanner, kangaroo jack, water tanks, siren and lights, all that sort of thing. You shouldn’t want for anything really. Guessing you’ve got your own swag?’ Bob pulled on the large sliding door and it rolled open with ease.

  Dave nodded and peered inside. Six motorbikes were lined up on one side of the shed. There was a set of transportable sheep and cattle yards and two trailers. On the wall were bridles, and saddles were hung over rails that lined the walls. He could smell oil and leather and was transported back to his grandfather’s farm and the tack he used with his Clydesdales, oiled to keep it supple.

  ‘We’ve got a tractor out at the farm …’

  ‘You’ve got a farm?’

  Bob nodded. ‘Yeah. About nine hundred hectares out of Wagin. It’s where we take stock we know has been stolen, be it horses, cattle, sheep. Just so long as there’s not too many of them. Gives us a place to keep them until we’ve finished the investigation. See, the stock is classed as evidence, so even if we find the owners, we can’t give it back until the investigation is finished, charges have been laid and the person of interest has been found guilty. Need to show that the POI has altered the earmark or changed the brand, and if they’re in our care, then we can do it straight away.’ Bob pulled the roller door shut. ‘Anyway, enough about all of this. Tell me about your undercover work. Far more interesting than this mundane stuff.’

  Dave gave a laugh. ‘I disagree! I reckon this is more interesting. Plus, there’s not that much to tell. We got the employees but not the employers. We know who’s behind the rustling, but they’re still in the wind.’

  Bob looked at him. ‘They got a price on your head?’ he asked seriously.

  Dave had a flashback to his dream, where Bulldust was chasing him. He tried to put it out of his mind and instead shook his head. ‘They wouldn’t know who I was, looking like this. I was pretty different when I was undercover, so I doubt it. Haven’t heard
anything and if there was a whisper, I’m sure I would’ve. We’ve got ears everywhere.’

  Leaning in close, even though there wasn’t anyone around, Bob said, ‘And I heard one of us was dirty. Bad, bad thing that.’

  ‘I’ve got the court case coming up in about six weeks. I’ll have to go back over to give evidence.’ Dave wasn’t entering into any conversation about the cop he’d found to be giving information to Bulldust and Scotty.

  Bob let out a belly laugh. ‘That’ll keep you busy, mate! Let’s hope we don’t tie you up on a big case while all that’s going on.’ He glanced at the large silver watch on his wrist. ‘Gawd, look at the time. Close enough to lunch already. Let’s round up the rest of the crew and get a counter meal at the Berkley. It’s just around the corner from here.’

  Surprised, Dave said, ‘What, all of us? Shouldn’t there be someone in the office? And we can’t drink while we’re on duty!’

  ‘Mate, one isn’t going to hurt you. This is how we woo our farmers. Just breaking you in gently, so I am.’ He clapped Dave on the shoulder. ‘Come on.’

  Dave had wanted to fire up his computer and look at the software they used. The file on his desk was calling him too—what was in it?

  Guess I can do that afterwards, he thought and followed Bob back into the office.

  Laughter rose up from the table as Bob raised his glass to Dave. His cheeks were glowing from the alcohol and Dave was sure he hadn’t just had one, but there was only one half-empty glass in front of him.

  No one else was drinking but they all seemed quite relaxed about Bob having a beer. Maybe the culture was different in the stock squad, he thought.

  But even so . . . We’re supposed to uphold the law and how can we do that if we’re three-parts pissed? he wondered.

  ‘Right-oh, you riff-raff, quieten down. I’m going to make a toast.’ Bob pushed his plate aside, not before wiping his finger around the edge to get the last of the gravy that had covered his schnitzel. ‘We’re damn excited to have you, Dave. Here’s to many a long year with the stock squad. Just hope you don’t have to take a bullet for us here.’