by Anita Bell
‘What do you reckon, Jack?’ he asked, patting his horse as soon as he stuck his nose out from his stall. ‘Should I go up there?’
Jack whinnied, more intent on gaining the affections of a fine-boned black filly that was making eyes at him from her day yard. The stallion pawed his stall door, shaking the whole shed and Locklin put him in with her, thinking that his kid sister’s horse was probably ready to be put to the stud anyway. The mare had missed her first two seasons and her back was old enough now to take the strain.
‘Go easy on her, mate,’ he told the stallion, who bucked and chased the flirting mare around the yard.
Go easy on her myself, he thought, turning his attention to another kind of filly. The cattle dog followed him across the crusty lawn, wagging its tail, which seemed to squeak in time with the collar that swung heavy around its neck.
Locklin signalled his dog to sit at the bottom of the steps and his boots padded lightly up the timber treads. As he got closer, he realised she was asleep.
Her blouse was crumpled at each button, and he could see her skin between, but it wasn’t as a voyeur that he stooped lower for a closer look.
He could see the angel, limp at the bottom of her plaited chain, and as his senses filled with the scent of baby soap rising from her hair, his eyes fixed on the angel, rising and falling against her breast as if it was napping too. He stopped his finger short of touching it, feeling his heart thump against his chest pocket where the matching earrings were safely stashed. He needed to ask her about them, but didn’t know how to do that without revealing who he was and what he wanted.
He backed away, disgusted with himself. He could attack a militia stronghold single-handed, kill eleven men and rescue prisoners, but he couldn’t wake one skinny girl on friendly soil to ask her a handful of simple questions.
He turned back to the steps and as his foot touched the first tread, he heard a deliberate cough behind him. He looked back and saw her staring at him.
‘You wanted something?’
‘No,’ he said, feeling his gut twist up. ‘I mean, yes. I was going to ask…’
‘Ask what?’
‘Ask if you would … ah …’ He looked at the roses as if the rest of his sentence was hidden in the garden. She looked at him, waiting, as the black mare whinnied again at his stallion. ‘… like to go riding,’ he finished, hoping that might give him a better opportunity to achieve his objective without roping her to a chair and beating out the answers he needed.
‘Have you been talking to Mrs Maitland?’
‘No,’ he said, wondering why she’d say that. ‘I saw you watching the horses.’
Nikki could tell he was dancing around something and she didn’t see the point in doing that. Whether he was working for her stepfather or not, the two detectives showing up to question her should have been the biggest question in his head, if only out of idle curiosity. ‘Don’t you want to ask me about the cops?’ she said, preferring to get it over with.
The dog wandered up the steps uninvited and sat between them, and Locklin scratched its ears, thankful for the distraction. He knew someone had hurt her. He’d seen her explaining something to police, often using her hands as if describing something. She had a surname hanging off her that stood the hair on the back of his neck on end, but he’d seen the cops give her a mobile phone, which hung from the waist of her jeans even now. And he’d seen them leave without arresting her. They all had to be on the same side. He just had to figure out how.
‘Only if you want to tell me about it,’ he said. ‘It’s your business, remember … So?’
‘So what?’
‘So do you want to come for a ride?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, still confused. She’d missed out on riding camp at school one year when she was being dragged from one psychologist to another after her dad and brothers had died. She’d only ever watched other people riding horses. But it looked relaxing enough. ‘You going to give me a bucking bronc?’ she asked, getting up.
He thought about it, but only for a second. He couldn’t get answers out of a corpse. ‘I could rope you on,’ he offered and his eyes dropped automatically to her wrists.
Yeah, they’re healing fine, she thought, seeing what he was looking at. She didn’t bother to hide them. ‘How about a short horse?’ she said, nearing the stables. ‘Less distance to fall.’
‘Shortest here is Fidget,’ he said, whistling his stallion over with the mare trotting behind. ‘She’s got a light mouth.’
‘You mean she doesn’t swear?’
‘I mean she’s easy to control. The twins could ride her bareback.’
‘No thanks, I’ll have a saddle,’ Nikki said, deciding she wanted everything she could get to hang onto.
The stallion arched his neck over Nikki’s head as she patted him. He knickered to the mare, who snorted and kicked him sharply in the hindquarters. Nikki jumped away and Locklin pulled her back.
‘She’s just playing hard to get,’ he said. ‘Jack’s only trying to sweet talk her.’
‘I’m not getting on her, she’s wild!’
‘It’s only because she’s in season,’ he said, saddling both horses. ‘She’s as quiet as a kitten under a rider.’
‘No thanks,’ Nikki said, looking at a grey mare in the next yard. ‘I like horses, but not ones that kick. What about that one?’
‘Yeah, she’s quiet,’ he said, glancing at the old mare that he’d rescued from the meatworks. He’d given her a workout that morning and she seemed sensible enough for a beginner to ride, but he saddled her and got on first again to make sure. He cantered her in the yard with his hands on his hips, using only his knees to steer her around in a figure eight. ‘Wee pet,’ he said, and she pulled up beside the stallion nose to tail. Locklin stood in the stirrups and stepped from one horse to the other without touching the ground.
‘Show off,’ Nikki said. ‘Join the circus.’ But she accepted the challenge and scrambled up.
Locklin leaned forward over Jack’s neck and unhooked the gate latch to let her into a larger work arena. He clicked his tongue and the stallion walked forward, pushing the gate open with his chest and holding it with the side of his rump to let her pass.
Nikki circled around the arena slowly at first, using balance skills she’d learned at school gymnastics, while Locklin watched her from the side. He rolled his sore shoulder to wake up the last of the stiffness after his sleep and scratched his leg where the remaining stitches still itched above his knee. He clicked his tongue the next time Nikki came past him and the mare loped obediently into an easy canter under her rider.
‘Anyone can ride if they’ve got balance and confidence,’ he said. ‘It takes light hands, patience and an appreciation of your animal to have real fun.’
So I’m discovering, she thought, amazed by the feel of the big animal moving beneath her.
‘This is just like a rocking horse,’ she said circling one way and then the other.
Locklin smiled. He dropped his reins over Jack’s neck and pulled his jeans’ leg up as far as it would go to pick at the annoying stitches above his knee with his pocketknife and fingernail. This time, they pulled out of his healing flesh and he rubbed the itch away.
‘How’d you do that?’ Nikki asked, breaking her circle when she saw his wound. ‘It looks bad.’
‘Nah,’ he said, pulling his jeans down before she got too close. ‘Looks worse than it feels.’
‘You should use a clean razor next time you shave your legs then,’ she joked. ‘When d’you do it?’
‘Two weeks ago,’ he said, stopping himself. He was supposed to be the one asking the questions. ‘What about you?’
‘I always use a clean razor,’ she said.
‘That’s not what I meant and you know it.’
She shrunk away from him like a turtle retreating into her shell and he shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, watching her. Part of him kept hoping she had nothing to do with his father’s death,
but she kept doing things and saying things that painted her surname in big, fat, red letters in his head.
‘Don’t you have anything you want to say?’ he asked, turning his head left and right to look around. ‘There’s no one here but us. Now’s your chance.’
She shook her head and turned the mare towards the next gate, which would let her into the open paddock. She stood in her stirrups, feeling more confident with her balance than she was with Locklin’s company and stared out over the water, straining to locate a building that she was expecting to see somewhere along the edge.
‘What’s up?’ he said, riding up to her again.
‘Me,’ she said. ‘Look how high I am.’ She shaded her eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun off the water. ‘What a view.’
He nodded, admiring it with her.
‘Where’s the boathouse?’ she asked, unaware that her question slugged him in the stomach. ‘I can’t see it.’
‘Why?’ he asked, seeing red letters again.
‘Thorna said her husband should be there. I wanted to meet him.’
He went back there? he thought, surprised. ‘You can’t,’ he lied, needing to distract her. ‘That mare’s old. It’s a bit far for her. Take the truck,’ he said, betting she couldn’t drive.
Nikki heard a noise near the house and changed priorities. Thorna was back with screaming kids in the car.
‘Never mind,’ she said, seeing the twins slap each other with their school hats in the back seat. She turned the mare and cantered, feeling like the cavalry, to the gate nearest the house.
‘Leave her there,’ Locklin said. ‘I’ll set her loose.’
‘Thanks,’ Nikki said, meaning it. ‘The ride was great. I feel better now.’
So do I, Locklin thought, watching her run away. Now that I know where Maitland is.
‘Hey, Scott!’ Janet shouted. ‘Let me catch up!’
Scott unchained his Yamaha, pretending not to hear.
‘You go home by the church, don’t you?’ she said, running over and tapping him on the shoulder. ‘I’ve got to meet Tilly there. We’re practising for the carnival. Are you coming? Meggie’s going. Is Jayson?’
‘Shhh, Janet!’ Scott said, looking around quickly like a thief. ‘No-one’s s’posed to know, remember?’
‘Oh, no-one can hear. Besides, who’d care? We didn’t care, did we? It’s no big deal. So he’s here. So what?’
‘Who is we??’
‘Meggie and me, silly. Who else would I mean?’
‘Janet! I asked you not to tell her.’
‘I didn’t tell her. She beat it out of me. You don’t know what it’s like having a bigger sister. She’s so mean,’ she said exaggerating. ‘I couldn’t keep a secret from her. No way! I could be just—’
Scott clamped his hand over her mouth. ‘Are you listening?’
She nodded.
‘I’m going home now,’ he said slowly, as if explaining something to someone who didn’t understand English very well. ‘I’m going past the church and you can come, but if you walk within ten metres of me you’re not allowed to say anything, okay?’
She nodded again and he released his hand.
‘Does that include saying hi to other people?’
‘Janet!’
‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, keeping up with him as he tried to escape. ‘I didn’t think we’d started yet. Have we started yet? Technically we’re not outside the school yet so —’
His fingers touched her lips again, lighter this time and she nodded. ‘You won’t hear a peep,’ she whispered. ‘Why do I have to be quiet, by the way?’ she asked two metres up the footpath.
Scotty gave up and suggested she should sing. At least he could put up with that, even without music. He pushed his bike up the hill again, surprised and grateful that she helped him all the way.
‘Gee, Janie, you’re a peach,’ he said between choruses of ‘Like a Virgin’ as they reached the top of the hill and crossed the road. ‘Thanks heaps.’
‘No worries,’ she said as Scott kicked his stand down and parked his bike at the foot of the steps to St Joseph’s. ‘Not from me anyway,’ she said, referring to the crying they could hear inside the door.
They rushed up the short flight of steps as Tilly Thomas ran out with her hands over her face. Her backpack flapped with music sheets and her face dripped with tears like trough water from an ostrich’s beak.
‘Hey, Tilly, what’s up?’ Janet said, chasing after her.
Scott discovered what was wrong all by himself. The priest they’d come to think of as family, had been replaced.
‘Hey, look who it is,’ Burkett said in the airport lounge.
Parry looked up, thankful for the thick crowd of tourists that waited for the same Qantas flight as Burkett did to Sydney. A long file of black suits walked off the flight that had just landed, seven faces in all that were branded with the same glare. Six thugs and their king, all headed for the escalator to collect their luggage.
‘What’s he doing here, I wonder?’
I wonder indeed, Parry thought. ‘Must be important. He’s in a hurry.’
‘Yeah,’ Burkett said. ‘You sure you want me to go now?’
Surer than ever, Parry thought, still wondering if working with Burkett would earn him a bullet in the back. ‘There’s only Fletcher plus six,’ he said. ‘If I need help I can get it from the local police in Lowood. You go home and stir things up, as planned.’ And I’ll tell from the way of the whirlpool, if you’ve spun the current against me.
Janet gave her best sad face outside the church at the end of ten minutes of burning his ears and Scott gave in.
‘All right, Janet. You can come home with me.’
‘Yahoo,’ she said, hopping on the bike behind him. ‘We can coast practically all the way from here!’
Scott’s left eye twinkled as he decided to give her a thrill. ‘Sit on your skirt, Janie,’ he said, kicking the bike over and revving it up, minus a muffler and less than fifty metres away from Knox’s office. ‘Now wave to the nice policeman in the window.’
Janet screamed for seven kilometres and by the time she got off at Granny MacLeod’s ostrich farm, her throat was dry enough to keep her from yapping for half an hour. Her eyes bulged behind her pink metal-framed glasses and when she did speak, it was only to say wow.
‘She’s got 250cc’s of power,’ Scotty said, patting the handlebars.
‘Wow!’
‘A twenty-one inch wheel on the front for max speed and an eighteen incher on the rear for max control jumping,’ he said, pointing.
‘Wow!’
‘And she can climb mountains on less fuel than it takes to start a car.’
‘Wow!’
Yeah, wow, he thought twenty minutes later. Who would have thought that Janet Slaney could be fun to have around? ‘Want to help me do my chores?’ he asked, not bothering to go inside the house yet.
‘I’ve never seen an ostrich up close before,’ she said. ‘Do they peck? Do they have teeth? Those are big claws on their legs. Will they kick?’
‘Yes. No. And yes,’ he said, grinning. ‘If they give you any trouble you just take a dog in,’ he said, pointing to three collies that were yapping on their chains near the shed. ‘The birds get madder at them than they do at us.’
He turned on a tap near the dog’s water bowls and giant sprinklers choofed jetstreams of water in circles over the birds in every pen. The summer clover earned a slippery soaking while he showed her how to mix up their feed in buckets, blending lucerne chaff with wheat and shell grit and molasses. He was supposed to pour it through the fence into their feedbins, but with Janet watching he opened a gate and trespassed on the big black hen’s territory.
Nervous, some of the younger hens faced him, spreading their wings as they threatened to attack. He barked and they turned, herded into a corner. Looking one way to distract the smart birds and grabbing out in another to seize one, Scott caught a hen’s tail and bore all his weight d
own so she couldn’t kick him. She took off and he slid behind, his boots skiing on the wet grass like it was snow.
Janet laughed and asked if she could try, but his grandmother shouted at them from the window.
‘Scott!’ she said, waving a telephone out the window. ‘Get off that bird now and get up here!’
Distracted, he slipped over, and the big hen attacked.
‘No!’ Janet screamed. She spun on her heel and bolted for the collies.
The first claw hit him near the other bump on his head as the dogs and the girl blurred together and the world went black.
When he woke, he was staring at a hospital ceiling. Helen was in a wheelchair beside him, Janet Slaney was perched on the edge of his bed and his grandmother was by the door talking to the doctor. He could feel pressure around his head and a dull pain all over, but aside from that he felt normal.
‘Got him good,’ the doctor said. ‘He can go home as soon as we’re sure he’s back to his old self.’
‘There’s nothing in that head to get damaged,’ Sergeant Knox said, walking through the door with a spherical-shaped giftwrapped present under his arm.
Scott clamped his eyes shut again pretending to be asleep.
‘Give him this when he wakes up,’ Knox added in his deliberately baritone cop’s voice. He let the gift thump onto the foot of the bed and Scott tried not to blink. ‘Tell him to use it next time, or I’ll be after him.’
‘But Graham!’ Janet yelped, hoping she wasn’t in trouble. ‘He didn’t fall off his—’
‘I don’t want to hear it, young lady. You’re coming with me.’
‘Why, is Mum home?’
‘Not yet, but she will be soon. Get your schoolbag.’
Janet grumbled, but as soon as they were gone, Scott opened his eyes and sat bolt upright, surprising his cousin.
‘Take it easy, Scott,’ Helen said, holding a gentle hand over her own tummy. ‘You might have concussion.’
He grinned, ripping open his present, and Helen laughed.
