by Anita Bell
He sighed heavily and opened the tool box that was welded to the undercarriage of the truck. He was looking for a tin of black hoof tar, but judging by the half-empty three litre bottle of nearly clear fluid, his father had switched to using neatsfoot oil, which was fine for helping cracked hooves to heal and keeping leather supple, but useless for the purpose he had in mind.
He rustled through his father’s farrier bag and found a bar of saddle soap, a tin of medicated purple wound spray, an assortment of spare shoes and tacks to fit them, hammers, cutters, a small anvil and a set of leg chaps to protect the wearer from having nails ripped through their legs if a horse pulled its leg up in the middle of being shod. But still nothing he could use.
Locklin checked the tool box on the other side and found a litre of engine oil, black, but toxic, and an assortment of bridles, halters and grooming brushes. At the very back, he found a biscuit tin that he hadn’t seen in over five years.
‘Oh, yesss!’ he said. ‘Thankyou, Helen.’ It was a special kit his sister had put together for showing her grey Arabian gelding. Inside it was a razor for shaving the gelding’s muzzle, a tub of black powder for blackening around his eyes, a pack of ribbons for his mane and tail, and a tub of shoe polish for shining her riding boots up to look like mirrors for competition. The black powder was nearly spent and he cursed his luck, but he took out the shoe polish and sniffed it, hoping the smell would fade.
The stallion whinnied and snorted twice as Locklin climbed into the crate, but in less than eight minutes, he was complaining even more. His white socks were gone and his broad white blaze had been narrowed until there was just the star between his eyes and a white snip on the end of his pink-skinned muzzle.
‘Don’t think of it as make-up,’ he told his horse. ‘In the army, we call it camouflage.’ He patted the grey mare on his way out and put the dog from the cabin into the crate with the horses. Then he went back to the cab.
He shifted the pink beach towel from the floor to the seat, handling it with particular care, and took his mobile phone out from the glove compartment to switch it on.
‘Hi sis,’ he said into it a minute later. ‘Surprise.’
‘Jayson!’ Helen cried at the other end. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ he lied. ‘Look, I can’t talk long. I need you to do something.’
‘Sure,’ his sister said. She was used to him checking in quickly between reconnaissance patrols in Timor. ‘Shoot.’
‘Have you got any friends at work who’d check up on a car registration for you, even though you’re off on maternity leave?’
‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I’m having lunch with a couple of the girls from Main Roads on Monday. Why?’
‘I need it sooner than that,’ he said, resting his hand on the rolled-up beach towel. ‘By tonight, if you can. That doesn’t give you much time, but I scored an escort duty on a supply flight back to Amberley, so I can only meet you tonight. I need to show you something.’
‘Tonight? That’s great,’ she said, keen to see her brother for the first time in months. Her head filled with questions, but she focused on the one he was asking. ‘What details do you need?’
‘You can guess most of them,’ he said. ‘It’s about Fletcher Corp. Eric Maitland is a penniless artist but I hear he’s driving around in a brand new Landcruiser.’ Actually, Locklin had seen it for himself not long after he’d arrived back from Timor, but he didn’t have time to explain that yet.
‘I want to know who it’s registered to,’ he continued. ‘It should be parked at Brisbane airport. He’s gone to Singapore, so I also need to know when exactly he’ll be back and anything else you can find out without anybody figuring out who’s doing the asking, okay?’
‘I’ll try,’ she said, not needing to write anything down. She’d already been wondering why the new owner of their family farm would appoint their neighbour as a manager, when he knew less than a four-year-old about farming. ‘Where do you want to meet?’ She had plenty of questions for him now too.
‘At the boathouse?’
The line went silent for a second and Locklin pictured his sister raking her long black hair away from her face as she did whenever she was worried. He hoped that asking her to return to the boathouse ten days after she’d found their father hanged inside it might help her to get over it. He just wished he could be there for her now to wrap his arm around her.
‘When?’ she said finally, making him proud to be her brother.
‘I don’t know yet. I’ll get back to you.’
‘Jayson,’ she said, hearing the reservation in his voice, ‘are you all right?’
Locklin shifted his feet, eyeing the beach towel to avoid looking through the windscreen at the gravestones all around him.
‘Yeah, sure,’ he lied again. ‘I’ll see you tonight.’ At least he hoped to — so long as he wasn’t arrested or dead.
Locklin unwrapped the beach towel carefully and set the contents on the seat.
The crate he’d stolen it from was shaped nothing like the ones that Maitland and the pilot had been loading onto the Cessna before dawn that morning. The crate he’d found had been square, like twice the size of a shoe box, while the others had been big like thick doors or windows, and while he could have tucked the square crate under one arm, the others had taken two men to carry each one to the plane.
He stared at the crystal ornament on the seat and still couldn’t figure out its significance. It was just a jewellery box, about half a ruler long, skinnier at one end and lined inside with purple satin. The lid was as transparent as the rest of the box, swinging on two fragile gold hinges that locked the lid down onto a tiny gold clasp on the other side. It had jewellery inside, but it didn’t look like a complete set. There was a velvet pouch at one end with a pair of earrings, but the purple satin of the little case was slotted like a bed for something that was missing.
‘Jewellery’s not my thing,’ he thought aloud. But it was Helen’s.
He removed the velvet earring pouch, re-wrapped the jewellery box carefully in the pink towel, and then looked around for somewhere to hide the pouch.
‘Perfect,’ he said, spotting a discarded cigarette packet at the edge of a grave. The plastic wrap had protected the carton from the dew, but as he stashed the pouch inside the packet and slipped the packet into the chest pocket of his shirt, he looked up, realising that he’d been lured closer to the twin graves that he’d avoided until now.
A wagtail chirped, laughing at him. It flitted to the twin headstones, landed and chirped again as he tried to walk away. The bird started singing, and Locklin stopped and turned back to it.
‘Sorry Mum,’ he said, bowing his head to the nearest headstone as he had done since he was nine. The bird flitted off and he was silent for a long time, letting memories of his mother soothe the turmoil in his head. He could still feel her hair in his fingers as it had come out in his small hands, but he could also smell her skin, perfumed like lavender, and see the remnants of her smile, just the corners where it curled at a perfect dimple. Then he looked to the next grave, while he was still comforted enough to face it.
The headstone over the second grave was a mirror image of the first, and together, they looked like two pages of the same book, only the second page was whiter over a fresher grave. The mound had been removed, but the soil was still soft and Locklin dropped to his knees and touched it.
He opened his mouth to honour his father’s memory, but shame held his tongue still. His kid sister Kirby was going on to uni in the new year. His older sister Helen had graduated and was starting her family. But he had achieved nothing that his father expected of him.
His shoulders slumped and he clenched his fists until his fingernails drew dark welts inside his palms. Traitor, son of a coward, was what people would call him soon and his gut ached to think of it. His heart throbbed so hard that his chest went numb. He forced his eyes closed again and squeezed shame and guilt into a ball of hot rage in his mind’s eye —
and he squeezed that rage smaller until he could close his fist around it.
He opened his eyes and kissed his fist, sucking the contents of it back into his gut to make it part of him again. And the rage heated his blood. It spread warmth through his body and burned oxygen from his lungs in a clear flame that returned logic to his thoughts and clarity to his purpose.
His father had been murdered and he had to find his killer. But to do that he needed a place to stay that was close to the action.
He marched back to the Bedford and yanked open the door to use his phone again. Then he punched in a phone number that he’d called at dawn that morning.
‘Hi Denny,’ he said a few seconds later. ‘Thanks for the tip-off.’
‘Don’t thank me yet, lad,’ rolled a thick Scottish accent, ‘until I’ve got him out fer you. If only I’d have noticed him missing yesterdee, I’d have gone and gotten him meself already. Only some slug has gone and pinched the Bedford overnight and I’m running around like a chook with me head cut off trying to borrow another one.’
‘Yeah, mate, about that …’ Locklin said, not sure how to break the news.
‘I even tried ringing down to the meatworks, only they’re not answering their phones fer some reason. I got a cousin down there picked himself up a contract as a van driver I’m pretty sure, only I can’t get a hold of him to intervene.’
‘Big guy? Uglier than you with a similar speech impediment?’
‘Don’t get cheeky!’ Denny scolded. ‘He and I have had our arguments I’m admittin’, but if he can help us, we should let the big oaf lend us a hand.’
‘No need,’ Locklin said. ‘I’ve got the Bedford and I’ve got my horse and believe me,’ he added, working the stiffness from his shoulder, ‘he did give me a hand.’ Only it was curled up in a fist.
‘Hey what?’ Denny said, stunned. ‘How … when? I mean, aren’t you still in East Timor? You’re not due back until March, last I heard. Have yer got leave?’
‘Technically no,’ Locklin said, making sure that his father’s old farm foreman had just enough facts that he wouldn’t get the old man into trouble when military police came to interrogate him. ‘I flew into Amberley this morning on escort duty — medical supply flight out of Dili. I’m just waiting for spare parts and supplies to come from Brisbane and then I’m going back with them tomorrow night.’
‘Does Helen know?’
‘Yes,’ he said, deliberately leaving out some of the story. ‘I just rang her.’
‘So yer at Amberley?’ the Scotsman said, knowing the air force would rent him a bunk. ‘It’s only twenty minutes away. I could spit that far. Is that where yer were at five this morning when yer rang me? Yer should have mentioned it, lad. I’d have come and got yer in me old Renault.’
‘No, I got in at 2am actually, and I would’ve let you and your old Renault sleep in even at five, except I needed Jack for something and I couldn’t find him.’
‘You were here?’
‘Right outside your window. The truck doesn’t come by itself when I whistle. Only I can’t explain now, Denny,’ he added quickly. ‘I’m running out of time and I need a favour, but before you say yes, be warned it’s a big one.’
‘Don’t you go warnin’ me off like that, you young sprat,’ Denny scolded. ‘Yer dad and me went back a long ways an’ I owe him favours that I haven’t even begun to repay yet. He’s gone now and yer his son, so you just name yer price and I’ll pay it.’
‘Take a holiday,’ Locklin said. ‘A day or two. Put me on as a temp to replace you and keep your mouth shut about it for a while until I say so.’
Denny laughed, not sure what part of that sounded the funniest — him taking a holiday after thirty-five years working without one at the family’s property, Freeman, or him keeping his mouth shut for two or three days in a row about anything. Then he sobered, realising what the only son of his old boss had to be planning.
‘You won’t be sniffing up any trouble that could be getting you into a plot beside yer old dad now, I hope?’
‘Not if I can help it, Denny. Will you do it?’
‘Well,’ the Scotsman said, rolling his r’s even more now that he was worried, ‘I guess me old mum could do with a visit up at Kingaroy. And I’ll be gettin’ out of helpin’ that mongrel neighbour into yer dad’s house today …’
‘Maitland’s moving in today?’ Locklin said, distracted. ‘I thought he was in Singapore?’
‘Today it is. Any furniture and things of your dad’s that he didn’t want was carted off to St Joseph’s yesterdee as a donation, and they got a truck up at the house now moving boxes in. Only who have you been talking to, to get that news? I only just heard that he was in Singapore when I heard his wife mentioning it to the removalist.’
‘I’ve been busy,’ Locklin said, looking at the rolled-up towel on the floor, of the cabin. He didn’t have time to explain that he’d already been to the boathouse before dawn and overheard Maitland bitching about his travel plans to the pilot of a Cessna seaplane that they’d landed against Water Board Regulations on the lake. He checked the knot that held the towel around the only piece of evidence that he had so far and smiled, remembering that while they’d been loading crates into the plane and arguing, he’d slipped quietly inside the boathouse and helped himself to the contents of the last crate before they came back for it.
‘Do me one more quickie before you go?’ he asked, remembering the little black mare that he’d had to borrow to ride over to the boathouse. ‘Fidget could have salt marks on her back. I had to take her out this morning when I couldn’t find Jack and I didn’t get a chance to rub her down properly before I left.’
‘I’ll take care of it,’ Denny said. ‘Kirby will have my hide if her mare sweats off a single hair while she’s at boarding school.’ He didn’t have to add how Locklin’s kid sister would react to finding out that her favourite horse and everything else that she’d grown up with now belonged to some interstate company called Fletcher Corp. They both knew that she’d be crushed, and the old Scotsman wondered if he could swap a week’s wages in exchange for the mare to prevent that.
‘There’s something you’ll have to do fer me too,’ Denny added, reminded by the name of the company that haunted both their lives now. ‘The Maitlands are expectin’ a new employee, someone to help out aparently, on a coach at five this afternoon. Maitland’s wife Thorna is none too happy about it and now that she’s writin’ my pay cheques, she’s asked me to duck into Lowood to fetch ’em. Can yer do that?’
‘I can,’ Locklin said, looking at his watch. It was four now. ‘What’s their name?’
‘Fletcher,’ Denny said, hearing Locklin’s knuckles crack around the phone. ‘Nick Fletcher. So you be careful.’
The shrill whinny of a stallion echoed down Main Street, but Scotty Nolan assumed it was one of the girls from his class riding her fat pony past the cafe. They often cut through the park across the road on their way to the river after school, and on such a stinking afternoon, he figured this one had to be stupid to be so far behind the others.
He scrubbed the fat globules from the cafe hotplates, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand while the vision of a new muffler for his dirt-bike kept him going. But the horse snorted twice at the end of its whinny and an icy whip cracked a chill down Scotty’s spine. There was only one horse he knew with a whinny like that, and that horse was supposed to be dead.
He looked up in time to see a Bedford horse truck drive past the window and ran around the counter to check it out. He pushed his freckled nose to the glass like a skinny pink pig and could feel the heat haze that was trying to get in off the bitumen outside.
The truck cut its engine in the car park across the street and a few seconds later Scotty’s face broke into a grin. The driver was out, and he recognised him.
A thin white muzzle on a long black nose snorted through the rails and the driver patted it, waiting for a car to pass before heading down the tree-lined
footpath towards the bus stop. Behind him a dog squeezed its fat red belly through the rails and followed him.
Scotty rapped his fingers along the window to attract their attention. He made it as far as the cafe door and checked over his shoulder, ensuring he was safe. Janet Slaney was still in the storeroom. She was two years younger than him, but her mum let her run the store whenever she popped out to do some banking at the newsagency up the street. He could hear her singing along with her Best of Madonna cassette while she shifted boxes around for their monthly stocktake and she groaned out something about Bounty Bars and then started counting them from one. He grinned, knowing she’d be a while, and opened the front door just enough to keep the overhead chimes from clanking as he poked his face out.
‘Hey Jays. Jayson Locklin!’ But no response. He tried again a little louder, but still quiet enough that Janet wouldn’t hear him over Madonna. ‘Corporal Locklin! Atten-shun!’ That worked. ‘Hey, cuzz, over here. You looking for me?’
Locklin glanced up and down the street with military precision, but the only movement was down at the garage, where a purple Cortina had pulled in to get fuel. He checked his wristwatch and then he shook his head.
‘No Sport, but you’ll do for a while,’ he said and in six athletic bounds, Locklin was on the cafe doorstep, scruffing the ears of the dog that had followed him.
Scotty pointed at the truck. ‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
‘Just a mare I found. Why? Do you want her?’
‘Not the grey. The other one. Is that who I think it is?’ he said, but the dark horse answered with another shrill whinny, two more snorts and a volley of stamping that sent the truck rocking.
Locklin chewed his lip. There was no point trying to lie when his horse had already given himself away.
‘But Jack’s dead!’ Scott insisted as quietly as he could. ‘Maitland sent him to the meatworks for kicking him.’
