by Anita Bell
‘Not yet, but you keep those lips on pucker stand-by. I get a good view from up on stage. I’ll signal to you when I see him. Wow, look at all the people arriving and it’s not even seven. Hey, there’s Thorna Maitland!’ she squealed, downing her punch in one gulp. ‘She’s moving into his old place. I wonder if he’s popped in to see her? I’ll go ask. Oh, rats,’ she added, looking for the best path to surf to her through the crowd, ‘where’d she go? Gosh! Look at all these people! This could be the biggest rave this town has ever seen!’
‘Calm down, Janie,’ Meggie said as her sister headed back towards the stage. ‘It’s not like they could afford fireworks or anything.’
Locklin needed to change cars. The Magna was fast and had put him ahead of schedule with at least half an hour still left before dark, but the army would be looking for it. He also needed to check if military police had been sent out to his grandmother’s house yet, and if they had, he needed to know if his family was being held for questioning.
He couldn’t go himself. He’d blow his own cover if everything was okay. What he needed was a middleman, and Father Connolly had offered.
He swung left under the half-dismantled railway bridge at the bottom end of Lowood and accelerated up the road between the high and primary schools to put St Joseph’s directly in front of him.
He didn’t get far. Traffic clogged the road. Couples with children and lovers with sweethearts straggled along the footpath between illegally parked cars, all of them converging into one big writhing mass at the top. And then he remembered. In the normal world, they were having a church carnival.
He pulled over and parked below the pedestrian crossing between two other late model sedans, thinking that at least he wouldn’t have to park the Magna alongside the police station when he swapped it for Connolly’s old Kingswood. Better yet, if Knox had been notified that he’d stolen a car, the sergeant would have a much harder time trying to find it in a street packed with more wheels than a second-hand car lot.
He jogged uphill, stopping at the curb with a crowd of others and saw his goal ahead of him. The Kingswood was beside the church, parked under the eaves. He looked left and saw the traffic had slowed, then looked right and saw the traffic had stopped. He saw a small gap and ran, but heard brakes. A dark blue bonnet skidded in front of him. He shouldered into it, rolling over it and landed on his feet beside the driver’s window.
‘Sorry, mate!’ he told the driver. ‘I didn’t see you.’
Parry shook his head, thinking, sure mate. ‘It’s a good thing I saw you then.’
Locklin snaked his way through the crowd outside St Joseph’s, hearing whispers that didn’t make sense.
‘East Timor,’ a woman said on the stairs, ‘and not a word!’
‘Didn’t give him time to say goodbye,’ said another.
‘Wonder if he’ll be back,’ said a third.
Locklin waited for the women to pass him carrying their platters of sandwiches before running up the narrow flight of stairs. He genuflected to the pulpit and went straight to the father’s ready room, where he stopped and tried hard not to swear.
‘Where’s Father Connolly?’
A lanky young priest laughed without looking up as he fossicked through a barrel full of pens. ‘People have been asking me that all afternoon,’ he said, seeming happy to find a blue felt-tipped pen. He drew a line down the back of his long finger to test it and scrawled tall letters on an open cardboard folder. ‘You haven’t seen a butcher around with about a thousand pork sausages in his back pocket, have you?’
‘No. What about Father Connolly?’
‘No, Father Connolly hasn’t got the sausages. He’s in East Timor. I’m telling everyone at seven. Here, read this. Sorry to rush off,’ he added, stickytaping the cardboard sign to the door, ‘but everyone wants me at once!’ He shouted louder over his shoulder as he got further away. ‘Feel free to stay if you can help!’
Locklin stared at the cardboard sign.
Big Hi to Lowood from Fr Tim Siddel
Sad goodbyes from Fr Patrick Connolly
posted to East Timor from today.
Locklin took the keys to the Kingswood off their hook above the phone. He looked out the window to the car parked below, knowing Connolly wouldn’t mind if he borrowed it for a while. But someone had let the tailgate down and set two big ice tubs in the back. One guy had filled the tubs with canned drinks and was pouring salt over the ice to keep it cold longer, while two elderly ladies set up tables around the car. They’d stacked paper napkins on the roof and spread a tablecloth across the bonnet to butter hot dog buns. Locklin knocked his fist against the windowpane and hung the keys back on the hook.
He went back to the steps, looking through the crowd for a short cut to the Magna and saw Janet Slaney on the flat deck of a truck trailer that had been converted into a mobile sound stage. She was singing ‘Beautiful Stranger’ at a volume that kept everyone at least two metres from the loudspeakers, making a noisy corridor that was braved only by an ear-muffed sound technician. He was bundling spare power cords into a storage cupboard under the stage and Locklin waited for him to finish before sticking his finger in the ear that would be closest to the speakers and bounding quickly down the steps. He made it past the first speaker, holding his chin down so Janet couldn’t see his face as she flapped around the stage, and he nearly made it to the far end.
‘Looking for me?’ Meggie Slaney said, jumping in front of him. She put her hand on his shirt and pouted her lips. ‘I’m ready for your apology,’ she said, puckering.
‘Sorry,’ Locklin said, stepping around her.
She grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him closer. ‘I can think of a much nicer way to say sorry, can’t you?’
‘No, I mean sorry, I have to go.’
‘Go? Go where?’
‘Away from here,’ he said, mimicking her tone. He glanced down the hill towards the Magna. It looked like some nut was about to park him in. ‘Come on, Megs,’ he pleaded. ‘Give me a break, hey?’
‘You can’t dump me again, Jayson MacLeod. Kiss me and make up and I’ll forgive you.’
‘You dumped me.’
‘Aren’t you devastated?’
He’d already spent hours thinking about that question. Had he been devastated that she wanted a ring or nothing from him before he left for East Timor? Yes. Had he been devastated when she hadn’t written or returned his calls? Yes. And had he been devastated to lose what he had thought was love? Yes. But was he devastated now?
He looked at her long blonde hair that smelled of lavender and thought of short dark hair that smelled of baby soap. He gazed into big green eyes smudged with make-up and saw sad brown eyes smudged with pain. He held her skinny white wrists ringed with gold chains and remembered slim red wrists ringed with blisters. Then he smiled.
‘No, Megs,’ he said, kissing her on the cheek. ‘But thank you anyway.’
Above them, Janet cheered through the microphone and leapt around the stage. ‘Woah, yes!’ she cried. ‘I knew it, you two!’ Locklin looked up at her and shook his head, as she launched into the first verse of ‘Like a Virgin’. He pulled away from Meg and turned straight into Thorna Maitland, who was carrying drinks.
‘Hey, I know you!’ she said, realising the young man in front of her was more than just the hired help that Freeman’s foreman had put on while he went on holidays. ‘I thought I recognised you this morning near the house, but you took off before I got close enough to be sure.’
‘Yes, you know him,’ Meggie hissed, remembering the options in her magazine quiz, and wiping his kiss off as if it was spit. ‘That’s Jayson MacLeod! Hey everyone!’ she yelled, but not loud enough over the crowd. She took a deeper breath to make his life a living Hell.
Locklin clamped his hand over her mouth and pulled her into a tight cuddle. ‘Not now, Megs,’ he said as she struggled. ‘I’m in enough trouble.’
‘We need to talk,’ Thorna cut in, leaning closer. ‘I think Eric’s up to somethin
g.’
‘I know,’ Locklin answered. ‘But I have to go. Do you know where my grandmother’s place is?’
‘The ostrich farm?’
He nodded. ‘Go there. Don’t go home. He’s got friends coming for supper and I don’t think they’ll have a play corner for your kids.’
‘Nikki’s there!’
‘She didn’t come here with you?’
Thorna shook her head.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll check on her. Are you going to behave now, Megs?’ he added, but she wriggled and struggled and tried to bite his hand as her way of saying no.
‘Sorry then,’ he said, backing towards the soundstage. He couldn’t hand her to Thorna. She had hands full of drinks and kids to take care of. Instead, he waited until Janet danced to the other end of the stage and then kicked the bolt across to open the giant cupboard underneath.
The front and sides of it were solid ply, but one of the panels in the back was only wire mesh, which suited him better. She could stay there for more than a few minutes with plenty of air and light.
He positioned his body to hide what he was doing from the busy crowd and in one swift movement, bundled Meggie in on top of the orange power cords and slammed the door. He slid the bolt across again hearing muffled poundings from inside and asked Thorna to let her out again after eight o’clock. By then — whatever happened — it wouldn’t matter.
Thorna put her mouth closer to Locklin’s ear so she didn’t have to shout too loud over the music. ‘I’ll ask Sergeant Knox to meet you out there?’ she asked, guessing that he was headed out to Freeman.
‘No!’ Locklin pleaded. ‘Whatever you do, please don’t talk to Knox yet. Give me one day at least.’
‘Why?’ Thorna persisted.
‘Look,’ he said, seriously. ‘I’ve got to go. You’ve lived nextdoor to my father since before I was born. You know me. Do you trust me to do what’s right or not?’
She nodded and he put his hand on her shoulder, thanking her. Then she watched him bolt away as Janet started her next song. There was an extra beat coming from under the stage now, but being so close to the loudspeaker, no-one seemed to notice.
Sergeant Knox signed off for his shift and went out the back door, swearing when he saw the size of the crowd that had turned up to the carnival this year.
‘Hey, Jody,’ he called, grinning at the tiny constable as he poked his head back inside. ‘I think I’ll hang around for a while.’
‘No need,’ Constable Davenport said as she typed out an incident report. ‘Mick and Craig have things under control. You go.’
The bell chimed at reception and they both looked up. The chipboard on the wall for procedure leaflets, maps and notices had overflowed onto the frosted glass panel that stood between their workstations and the front counter and they couldn’t see how many people had walked in. But they knew it was at least one.
‘I thought you locked that door, Jody?’
‘I thought Robyn did it when she left at five.’
‘Stay there,’ Knox said. ‘I’ll get it.’
Davenport grinned. ‘Sucker for punishment, you are.’
Knox rounded the corner and saw the senior detective’s badge that was being held up for him by a short man in a suit. He went through the next door past reception and meet him in the foyer.
‘G’day,’ he said, offering a handshake. ‘Graham Knox.’
‘Dean Parry,’ Parry said, accepting the shake and pocketing his ID. ‘Sydney CIB. Looks like you’ve got quite a party going on next door.’
‘Yeah,’ Knox said. ‘All that’s missing is the fireworks. You’re a long way from home,’ he added, cutting through the small talk. ‘What can we do for you?’
‘I’ve got a suspect up this way,’ Parry said, pushing his fists into his pockets. ‘He flew into Brisbane late this afternoon with half a dozen friends that I wasn’t expecting. I was hoping to borrow someone from here to hitch a ride out with me as backup while I take a look, but it seems like you’ve got your hands full already.’
‘On a Friday night at the best of times, yes. I could ring Ipswich and see if they’ve got anyone around, but their resources are usually nudged over the limit on a Friday too. Who are we talking about here?’
‘The name’s Fletcher, Aaron Fletcher,’ Parry said, deciding it was highly unlikely that Fletcher could have cops on his payroll this far north.
Knox scratched the grey streak above his ear. ‘Well, the name sounds familiar. Can’t place it, though.’
‘He’s an art dealer, big on the international scene, manages a string of galleries all over the world and he used to be married to …’
‘Renée Dumakis? The Arts Minister who got smeared over her living-room rug? I saw that on the news. I thought you got the daughter for that?’
Parry shook his head in a way that gave Knox the picture.
‘Oh, okay,’ Knox said, crossing his arms. ‘So what’s your Mr Fletcher doing in our neck of the woods with a six-pack of nasties?’
‘That’s exactly what I want to know. The only thing I can think of that would interest him around here is his stepdaughter. She got a job up here recently on one of the local farms, Maitland’s I think, Eric and Thorna.’
Knox let his eyes ask if Parry was pulling his proverbial leg. ‘Hey, Jody!’ he called around the corner. ‘What was the name of that company that took over the MacLeod’s place? The one Helen MacLeod was up here complaining had swindled her dad out of their farm before he died.’
‘Fletcher Corp, I think,’ Jody called back. ‘Why?’
‘Bingo,’ Knox said. His eyebrows arched at an opportunity to get Federal assistance to investigate a couple of local cases that had been bugging him. ‘I’m going out there,’ he called to Davenport. Then he smiled at Parry.
‘Your car or mine?’
Kirk drove Farran slowly past the ostrich farm twice to take a look. The old house was a weatherboard, set on a small hobby farm about the size of two football fields, only it was fenced off into smaller ostrich paddocks that pushed the house up into weedy cottage gardens at the front corner. A storage shed out the back was bigger than the house and a rambling chest-height picket fence across the front looked barely strong enough to hold the daisies in. The nearest house was about a third of a kilometre away and there didn’t seem to be any dogs, which made a great combination for easy pickings. They could get in fast and move around without being seen easily by the neighbours or from the road. They could even park their car in the shade of a giant fig tree that sucked the life out of the grass on the footpath.
‘Boss wants this nice and clean,’ Farran said, undoing the top button of the shirt that strangled his thick neck. ‘Turn round up ahead at the culvert and we’ll go back and get this done. I’ll go in the front and see if we can convince her to come out nice and quiet. You go round the back in case they try an’ run for it and if she don’t come out quiet, well, I guess I’ll start a ruckus and you can come in and join the party.’
‘What if she’s out?’
‘If she’s not here, we either wait, or pack anyone we find in the car and go and get her. Can’t be too many people living in a joint like this. Or if I whistle, it means I can’t find her but I reckon I got ’em distracted enough for you to go in and swipe the computer’s hard drive — that’s the box with all the buttons on it. Sometimes it’s under a screen and sometimes it’s under a desk. Don’t matter about cords and keyboards and screens an’ crap, just the box. That’s the brains. Got it?’
‘What if I can’t get in?’
‘Smash something,’ Farran said, getting out of the car as soon as it stopped. ‘We’ll make it look like a home invasion.’ He tucked his revolver into his belt behind his mobile phone and watched Kirk flick the safety off his Smith and Wesson.
‘Cool,’ Kirk said, hunching over like someone had switched him into stealth mode. ‘I haven’t done one of them since I was a kid.’
‘I’ll get the door, Gran!�
� Scotty shouted, leaping off the couch.
‘Oh no you won’t,’ she said, waving him back into the lounge room with her finger as she headed down the hall. ‘Just turn that video down or loosen the bandage off your ears so you can hear it.’
Gran opened the door, squinting into an orange sun that set behind their visitor’s head.
‘Hello?’ she said and covered her mouth to cough.
‘Yeah, hello,’ the burly man said as he flicked his nose. ‘Is there a Helen MacLeod lives hereabouts?’
‘She’s not here at the moment. Can I help you?’
‘Oh, I come a long way. I was wonderin’, I mean, they told me she’s the one to speak to when it come time to buy me some emus.’
‘Not emus. We only have ostriches,’ Gran, said, used to the confusion. People often pulled up so their kids could see the big birds, but it never ceased to amaze her how they always assumed they had to be emus just because they lived in Australia. ‘Ostriches are bigger,’ she added to help him tell the difference. ‘But they’re easier to look after.’ She looked over his shoulder and saw the back end of a nice black car on the footpath but she couldn’t hear any excited children.
‘Oh yeah, that’s good. Well I was wonderin’,’ he said, stalling to give his mate more time to get round the back. ‘I was thinkin’ of maybe, well, you know, since the market’s fallen out of ‘em, I was thinkin’ of maybe getting one or two of ‘em to run around the place — little ones to fatten up. But I guess if she ain’t here …’
‘I can help you,’ Gran said, opening the door wider. It had been too long since she’d made a sale and she couldn’t afford to be less than friendly to a potential buyer. ‘The birds are mine,’ she added, smiling. ‘I can show you through, but if you want to take any now, you’ll have to catch them yourself I’m sorry. My grandson’s sick.’
‘What if I wait for Ms MacLeod, could she catch ’em for me?’
‘My grand-daughter is in Ipswich,’ Gran said, ‘having a baby. But I’m sure I can arrange delivery for you in a few days.’
