by Anita Bell
‘Well, he’s back to his old self,’ Gran said.
‘Excellent, a helmet!’ he shouted. It was blue and yellow, to match his bike.
‘I guess he’s right to go home and finish his chores then,’ Gran teased.
Scott slumped back against his pillow and started groaning. Just as quickly, he stopped and put his helmet on, squeezing it carefully over his bandages. Then he lay back and started groaning again as if he was semi-conscious.
‘In my professional opinion,’ the doctor said seriously as he removed the helmet. ‘He’s fit for a double dose of chores and homework to work off the energy. Look’s like you’re the only one staying here for the night, Helen.’
‘Why?’ Scott asked, instantly awake again. And they told him.
Locklin made Jack wade around the bottom end of the fence. He held his mobile phone and army-issue Browning above his head to keep them from getting wet. As they emerged from the water, he tucked the phone under the unbuckled flap in his left saddlebag and returned the Browning to a holster he’d made to fit inside his shirt, below his armpit. He glanced down at his horse’s legs.
At least the dye had held.
‘You’ll be safe now, boy,’ he said. ‘If things work out the way I plan … and if you can keep your cool around Maitland.’
The horse snorted as Locklin clicked his tongue and lunged obediently into a canter towards the treeline. Locklin shifted his weight and water squelched between clothes and saddle.
His jeans were denim, not cotton drill as he’d worn before, and the wet denim riding in wet leather squeaked, almost as loud as the horse splashing from the water. The sound didn’t travel far now, but it might reach the boathouse on a still night and he realised he could be here that long.
He could take off his wet clothes, but that wouldn’t solve the problem if he had to escape back to Freeman without being noticed. At night he’d be like a swimming duck in sideshow alley, with a three-quarter moon as a spotlight. He punched his thigh with his fist. He’d ridden this way four times before and only just realised it.
He needed to fix the problem, but ahead, through the trees, he could see the nose of Maitland’s Landcruiser, parked on the far side of the boathouse. Two weeks he’d waited for this chance to find out what was going on, and the luxury four wheel drive taunted him to come for a closer look now. As much as he needed to secure himself a safer exit, the Landcruiser won the argument.
He dismounted, tying Jack behind a thicket of bush wattle. The cuffs of his wet denims rubbed loudly as he walked. He took them off and circled west in his Ren and Stimpy boxer shorts until he stood back-to-back with the old building.
The cabin was quiet — too quiet. There was no radio playing, no coughing, no bumping, no snoring if Maitland was asleep, and no footsteps padding on the creaky timber floors if he was up.
Locklin ducked his head around the north corner, checking for movement near the car, and then checked the south corner. No action there either.
He edged around the north corner, keeping his back close to the wall. The window here was closed, as it had been that morning, and denied the occupant the benefit of a pleasant breeze. The breeze also made him feel naked, but not because he’d left his jeans hanging on his saddle fifty metres away.
In East Timor, he’d been required to take his army issue Steyr with him everywhere, even to the showers, and he felt exposed without it. At least he’d been able to smuggle his Browning out. He felt the metallic weight of it in the holster on his left side and felt reassured, but he had to remind himself he was on friendly soil — and that he wasn’t under threat.
Maitland was a civilian. He was possibly unarmed, probably untrained and obviously not expecting guests. He’d left the driver’s window down on his car.
Without drawing the Browning, Locklin looked quickly around and dashed to the car. At the driver’s window, he discovered that the door was unlocked and the keys were still in the ignition. There was a plastic bag on the front passenger seat, a wallet beside it and a phone recharger plugged into the cigarette lighter, but the mobile phone wasn’t there. He cursed his luck. He could have borrowed the phone to take back to his saddlebag for a few minutes, scroll through its memory for frequently called numbers and record them on the phone he’d brought with him.
But at least there was the wallet.
He checked over his shoulder, then reached through the driver’s window and unlatched the dusty rear door. He cringed as central locking released the other two doors at the same time with a loud thock, but relaxed a little, knowing it meant that only one person had come here in the vehicle. He checked over his shoulder again as he lifted the rear doorhandle high enough to make it click. He swung the door open slowly, ready to lift its weight off the hinge if it made a sound and he slid onto the floor behind the driver’s seat, pulling the door closed quietly again behind him.
The interior smelled new. He reached into the front seats keeping his head low to get the wallet. It seemed padded, its clip unable to close and opening it, he saw why. It was full of fifty dollar notes. He thumbed through them quickly, counting over four and a half thousand dollars worth of well-circulated banknotes plus another few hundred in Singapore dollars and a few American hundreds. There was also a folded airline pass — Brisbane to Singapore — a stack of meal receipts, an Australian driver’s licence, passport, credit cards and half a dozen business cards, all from art galleries around the world.
Maitland was supposed to be an artist, he remembered. Apparently, he was better than anyone realised.
He replaced the wallet, careful to leave it exactly as he found it and checked the plastic bag. Inside, he found a cash receipt from the local hardware store, dated that morning for two litres of mineral turpentine, a pressurised kerosene lantern and a three-pack of mantles that were used for shaping the kerosene flame, and which his father had once likened to white cloth teabags that could burn for weeks. There were also amounts for five one-litre bottles of kerosene and the deposit on a squat bottle of LPG gas.
He checked under the front seats and found a cargo net for the roof racks, a set of tie-down straps and a Brisbane street directory. There was an assortment of loose coins in the ashtray and in the glovebox, he found the owner’s manual with the first five thousand kilometre service tab removed. Frustrated and with nothing left to explore, he pushed the door lock down on the front passenger door and did the same with the door that he’d come in through on the driver’s side. Then he slid out the rear passenger-side door, putting the car between himself and the boathouse as he got out, locking and closing the door again quietly behind him, just in time.
He heard a zipper and a cough from behind him and dashed to the front of the car, crouching so he couldn’t be seen through the windows. He was still wary that his feet may have been visible underneath if whoever it was was far enough away. So he stooped lower, peering underneath the vehicle and saw hairy legs approaching. They weren’t in a hurry.
Toilet paper waved to him from a roll held casually at the man’s side and as the legs approached the driver’s door, Locklin moved to the passenger side, careful not to brush dust from the duco as he crouched low and listened hard. He heard a thump inside the door beside him as something lightweight bounced onto the floor, and he stooped lower to see the legs walking away towards the cabin. He looked carefully around the front bullbar and saw Maitland disappear inside the boathouse.
He squeezed his fist tight and rapped it against his forehead. He should have checked the boathouse first. He dashed back to the boathouse wall and listened, hearing the familiar groan of a metalframed canvas chair taking up the strain as Maitland sat down.
Maitland had taken the time to play bear in the forest, which meant he either had a stomach ache from the foreign food that he’d eaten overseas, or that he didn’t plan on going anywhere soon. Locklin hoped for the latter, but chose not to take chances. He dashed back to the Landcruiser and flipped the keys from the ignition into his sock wher
e they wouldn’t rattle.
He smiled, deciding that a little confusion in the enemy couldn’t be a bad thing, and he left Maitland to do whatever it was he was up to. He could afford to give him another half-hour to play. He still had an escape route to prepare before he set his trap.
The silver C130 Hercules landed at Air Terminal Squadron, RAAF Base Amberley four minutes ahead of schedule and taxied off the runway to belch its human cargo out closer to the officers’ mess.
Once on the tarmac, Chang checked to his right towards the F111 hangers where he saw at least eight birds nested on the nearest side, but the row of helipads near them were standing vacant. The chopper refuel and parking facility was there for army or navy visitors, he realised. RAAF Base Amberley had no choppers of its own.
‘How long?’ he asked his aides, meaning how long until the army Iroquois they’d requested could make it down from Oakey.
‘Two hours,’ his youngest aide said. ‘They’re chasing up a relief pilot for us. I’ve arranged the loan of a RAAF car in the meantime. I didn’t think we’d be here long enough to worry about getting one up from Enoggera barracks.’
‘That’s what I like to hear, Corporal Ryan,’ Chang said. ‘A positive attitude.’ He pointed out the airmen’s mess for his two aides and hurried to his temporary quarters in the officers’ barracks to stow his gear and get himself a shower. After an eight-hour flight from Darwin in the belly of a beast that had been built by people whose concept of air-conditioning was to fly with the back end of the bird open, he needed to chase off a few layers of sweat before mixing with civilians.
His missing soldier was out there, he was up to something, and Chang knew he had to find him before he did anything to jeopardise the army’s tenuous political position in East Timor. The stability of the entire region depended on it and he took no joy from the pleasant view over grazing paddocks as he walked towards his quarters because of it.
An airman let him into his single room in aging barracks. The room had efficient white walls, 1960’s style desk, chair, desklamp and stainless steel sink for convenience and it welcomed him with that familiar musty smell of sweat and solitude that he’d come to expect in military accommodation. The single bed, made regulation tight, practically stood to attention as he walked in. The blue counterpane sheets with the RAAF logo on the corner near the pillow had been folded to precision, just as he would leave it in the morning out of habit.
He looked out the window over the air base swimming pool, doubting that he’d get a chance to take a leap. His shirt clung to his back with perspiration and he switched on the fan, which continued to click its favourite monosyllabic tune like one voice in an untalented choir.
He stowed his gear with a speed born of practice, keeping aside his toiletries bag and a clean towel, and looking for his Browning and mosquito repellent out of habit, before heading for the unisex shower block. This shower could have been the first long one he’d taken since leaving for Dili from Townsville with the first wave, but he had to delay that luxury. The RAAF vehicle his aides had requisitioned in advance for their private search party would collect him soon. The car would take him straight to the air base quartermaster, where they would sign out sidearms to replace the ones they’d had to leave in-country. And he could hear the clock on the wall ticking off seconds.
Locklin made his way back to Jack, put on his damp jeans so the stirrup leathers wouldn’t pinch his legs, and rode directly to the nearest point on the Scrubhaven-Freeman boundary line.
There had never been a gate between the properties, so he couldn’t simply open one to make himself a fast escape route if he needed it after dark. But there were a few places where the wire had been broken by cows that thought grass was greener on the other side, and the gaps had been repaired with short joining lengths of wire. Finding a patch in the top wire in a hurry when he needed it however, was very much harder than he had planned.
He cantered along the Scrubhaven side of the fenceline towards the lake looking for one, until he found a mammoth eucalypt. Its trunk was split twice at the ground and it had grown up to look like three trees joined together at the base. Above the unshed bark, the giant trunks were ghostly white and its solid branches were large and twisted enough to be distinctive from the other trees after dark. On both sides of the tree, the wires had been broken and repaired where the tree had forced the fence post out of the ground as it had grown. Locklin remembered the place as the first time he’d seen his father nail wires to a tree instead of cutting it down to put in a new post.
The tree had been, and still was, handsome, but the nail punctures had bled sap that had congealed over the wires. The tightened wires had cut into the bark, scarring the trunk with deep welts as the tree added new rings, and in defence, the tree had used the years to corrode the wires at the points where each nail had chipped the protective layer from the strands. Locklin joined forces with time and the tree, applying pressure to the top wire, pushing it forward and pulling it back against the trunk, working it hard until the pressure point beside the nail heated and snapped.
The western half recoiled to the next post, while the tree hung onto the nail and the top wire on the other side. The loose wire coiled dangerously in the grass, but he picked it up so livestock couldn’t become snared and used it to bind a snapped-off white branch to the next wire down, which also stopped the branch from falling.
To a casual glance that section now looked like the branch had fallen, busted the top wire and become snared. To a cow, it looked like a bothersome barrier with not much to munch on the other side. And to a horse, it looked like the top rail of a cross-country jump.
He would have preferred to break every wire and have a safer and faster escape route, but he still needed a fence to deter Freeman livestock from escaping through Scrubhaven onto the road. And his horse could jump.
He checked the ground on both sides of the broken wire to ensure that it was firm, flat and stone-free. Then he encouraged the stallion to leap across and back twice so the horse would know the jump was safe if Locklin had to ask him to do it at a gallop in the dark.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said, patting Jack when he snorted. ‘I know you can jump higher. Just don’t make a habit of jumping fences now.’ He cantered back to within walking distance of the boathouse, deciding it was time to meet the enemy.
The clearing between the trees and the boathouse was double the height of the nearest adult gum, and he trotted into it, scouting it like a rider looking for a cow.
As he neared the cabin, he slowed his animal to a walk, half to give the horse time to spot his reflection in the Landcruiser windscreen without shying, and half to keep his hooves quieter to surprise Eric Maitland.
He dismounted short of the door and balled his fist ready to knock. Jack snorted twice and Locklin heard a hurried crumpling of plastic from inside. He forced a grin on his face and poked his head around the door. Too late. The tarp was already settling over Maitland’s work.
The table had been shifted into the middle of the room with the chair angled so Maitland was working with the main light from the door falling over his shoulder onto whatever it was that looked tall under the tarp. Maitland fussed with one end of the plastic sheet, pulling it down to make sure everything was covered while he stood between the door and the table to hide what he was up to. He spun, faking surprise at the face that was already looking at him.
‘Yeah, what?’ he asked as Locklin knocked and stepped properly into the doorway.
‘Hey, mate!’ Locklin said, grinning as he twanged his farm-boy accent. ‘You seen a red cow around here that don’t belong?’ He took off his hat and wiped his forehead, using the movement to look around the room as his eyes adjusted to the darker light inside. Two empty kerosene bottles were in the corner to his right, another one on the floor to his left. Beside it were two more full of the blue liquid and a brand new high-pressure kerosene lantern.
‘She oughta have a brand FR with a backwards three on her bum,’
he added, seeing the shape of the other lantern unmistakably under the tarp at the far end of the table. Maitland had unscrewed it from the middle to make more room to work, he realised.
‘Well, who are you to be asking?’ Maitland asked suspiciously.
‘Jack Locklin,’ he fibbed with a dopey grin. He stepped even closer to the table and shook Maitland’s clammy hand. ‘The Maitlands next door put me on temp while their stockman’s gotten himself called up north.’
‘Oh, really? That’s news to me.’
‘Yeah, had to see his mum, I think. She’s took a turn or something.’
‘Strange that my wife didn’t mention it.’
‘Why?’ Locklin asked, already knowing the answer. ‘Did she know him?’
‘You could say that. I’m Eric Maitland.’
‘No way! You’re my boss? Whatcha doin’ here?’ He looked around again. There was a small portable campstove in the far right corner — the one his father had stored in the spare bedroom at Freeman for years. It was hooked up to a squat bottle of LPG gas. There was a kettle sitting on top of it, with an open bottle of coffee and a jar of sugar cubes sitting on the flimsy workbench that pulled out from its side. No sign of a cup, though. It was probably under the tarp.
‘You hidin’ out here from the missus, hey?’
‘I’m an artist,’ Maitland said defensively. ‘This is my studio.’
‘An artist hey?’ Locklin said, lifting the corner of the tarp and smelling turpentine. ‘Like of naked ladies an’ such? Can I see?’
Maitland knocked the tarp from his fingers and pushed himself between Locklin and the table. ‘Just landscapes — of the lake,’ he added, pointing out the door for more than one reason. ‘If you don’t mind now, I’ve got work to do.’
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ Locklin said, paying attention to the shape the tarp had assumed over the other contents of the table. There were two tall, square-topped peaks at each end and Locklin realised they weren’t actually on the table, but standing on skinny timber tripods very close to it. They could have been easels if he believed Maitland’s story about being an artist, but he wasn’t sure if he could smell any paint. There was also a circular shape, like a cereal bowl with a spoon or something poking out the top, which could have been a giant coffee cup. The rest of the tarp was crumpled loosely over things that bulged without definable shapes.
