Yesterday's Dust

by Joy Dettman

  ‘I went out to the verandah and called to him again, and Annie picked up her purse and went out to her car. David yelled at Annie to get out of the rain. I thought she’d gone to get something from the car. She had Jack’s briefcase in her boot, you see. The next thing I know, David is running off to his car because Annie is driving away.’

  ‘He was gone about an hour, but he came back. Said he followed her, but lost her car down some track near the river. He said he nearly got bogged, his wheels were slipping and sliding in the mud. Those old tracks down near the river get very greasy in the rain.’ For minutes Ellie sat unmoving, her green eyes dripping tears onto her lap. When the question came again, she shook her head, sprinkling her tears. ‘I don’t know anything else I can tell you, officers.’

  ‘Mrs Taylor did not return to the house that night.’

  ‘No. We waited for her. After David came back we all waited for about an hour. Mr Fletcher was there too. We all had a cup of tea and some Christmas cake, sort of expecting Jack to come back any minute. Then David drove home, because we thought that Annie must have gone home. To Warran. They live in Warran. David gave Mr Fletcher a lift over to his house. It was still raining. It rained all night. Johnny and Bronwyn and I sat up talking until after twelve. I hadn’t seen him in over twenty years and he said to me that night that the best part of coming home was my Christmas cake. He’s a priest, you know. Was a priest, that is. I’m sure he’ll go back to the church one day. When he’s ready.’

  They nodded, waited.

  ‘Well.’ She shrugged. ‘I was still thinking Jack would come back, and him and Johnny might – ’ She swallowed, delved into her handbag for her rosary beads and the hand remained in the bag as she continued. ‘I put clean sheets on the spare beds and we all went to bed. And that’s all I know.’

  ‘You didn’t report your husband missing for some months, Mrs Burton.’

  ‘But that would have been silly, knowing Jack. I mean, he was always away. Anyone in town will tell you that. It would have been silly to report him missing. I didn’t know that he was missing.’

  ‘Can you explain?’

  ‘I mean . . . it’s his family. They live in Victoria. At Narrawee. Where they found Liza. He used to spend as much time down there as he did in Mallawindy, you see. He hated Mallawindy, so I thought he’d just gone down there again.’

  ‘You believed he’d gone without his car?’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t know about the car until the next day. I told you, Jeff Rowan had driven him home that night because Jack had got into an argument with Mr Owen. I didn’t know that his car was still up at the hotel until Benjie came home from his trip and he said that the car was still up at the town.

  ‘We thought that was a bit strange, but then Jack never did drive when he’d been on the whisky. I thought he’d probably got a lift down to Melbourne with someone. He’d done that before, and there were a lot of strangers in Mallawindy that night – newspaper people and television people. They wanted to know about Liza. He’d been drinking with them at the hotel before he came home. He said they’d wanted to pay him to go on the television. I thought . . . thought they’d probably given him a lift down to do an interview. We watched the television for a few days, but he wasn’t on it.’

  She’d worn a hole in her handkerchief. Her finger poked through it now, and she studied the broken nail, the sandpaper skin. Terrible. She snatched her finger out and shrank lower in her chair.

  ‘Bessy will be getting tired of waiting for me. We’ve got cows.’

  She needed Bessy. She’d leaned on her all her life. Bessy had been nineteen when their mother died, and she’d stepped in, taken her mother’s place. Ellie had never been able to lean on Jack. Jack had been her handsome prince who had come riding along on his borrowed bicycle that afternoon. A prince wasn’t expected to get his hands dirty in a cow yard, wasn’t expected to behave like . . .

  But he had worn Bonds briefs and black woollen socks.

  ‘He was wearing his best grey trousers and a white shirt,’ she said. ‘And he had a good watch. Very expensive. He always wore his watch. It was silver and gold, sort of woven together. Very heavy. Sam and May bought it for him not long before he disappeared. And he would have had his wallet with his licence. He always carried his licence and his cards. His bank account cards. They’d still be there. Plastic lasts forever.’

  ‘Nothing else has been found, Mrs Burton.’

  ‘He lived up in Sydney for twelve months after little Linda died.’ Her chin trembled. ‘We lost three of our babies.’ She glanced at the desk where the sock and underpants lay and she shuddered, looked away. ‘He had a very hard life, officers. He should have inherited half of Narrawee, but his father disowned him, you see. Sam and May got the property and the money, though they did try to make it up to Jack. They were always buying him things. Very good to us, they were.

  ‘They paid for little Liza’s funeral and bought her a lovely stone – with the other children’s names on top.’ She looked at the men as she drank again from her refilled glass. ‘Everything just went on and on. I wrote to Narrawee to ask about Jack, but May said he wasn’t there, so I thought he’d gone to Sydney, and that he’d come home when he was ready, like he always did. Then about six months after he left, Benjie got Jeff Rowan to check on the bank accounts, and Jeff found out that Jack hadn’t been withdrawing any of his money. Not since the day before Christmas. So that’s when . . . when we reported him . . . missing.’

  She stilled her tongue but not her fingers. Her handkerchief was now almost in two pieces. She attempted to hide it, balling it in her hand. Her mouth open, her eyes wandered the room, eager to find escape from these men. She scanned the floorboards and the bruised legs of the desk, the walls. Hard plaster. Grey. Rough. She looked at the ceiling. Yellow. Smoke stained.

  For two hours they kept her there, and for those two hours Ellie Burton repeated the same story, convinced she’d spend the night in a cell because of the insurance money.

  ‘Everyone is talking about that insurance money. As if I paid the premiums on Jack’s policy just so I could get money if he died. As if I was like that. It was like a bank account for our old age, that’s all. We would have got what we paid in plus bonuses when Jack turned seventy. I don’t want him to be de . . . to die. I wouldn’t want to gain by his death. What do I need that much money for anyway?’

  Her mouth was working and she didn’t know how to stop it. Knowledge of police stations far removed from her small sphere of experience, she feared the scent of bricks and mortar, of aged male sweat, of stale cigarettes and mould. Fear, fatigue and cold feet loosened her tongue.

  ‘He – Someone else will tell you this anyway, so it might as well come from me. He . . . he goes with other women.’ The words, spoken in a rush, created a silence, and she hated those words hanging there in that silence, growing, accusing her of disloyalty, so she attempted to bury them beneath nervous babble. ‘He’s not responsible when he gets on the whisky, and he’d been on the whisky that night. That’s why Jeff drove him home, because he’d been drinking with Vera Owen and then her husband Charlie – ’ Her tattered handkerchief dabbed at a tear, wiped at her nose. ‘Her husband, Charlie, is a truck driver. He’s away a lot and Vera is . . . is . . . I mean everyone knows what she is!’

  ‘Would it have been possible for your daughter to have returned to the house that night, Mrs Burton?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your daughter, Mrs Taylor, would it have been possible for her to have returned to the house that night?’

  ‘I told you she didn’t come back. We waited until after twelve for her.’

  ‘You were in bed by twelve?’

  ‘It was around twelve-thirty by the time we’d made up the beds.’

  ‘Would you have heard her if she’d returned after you went to bed?’

  ‘I didn’t sleep very well. I kept listening for Jack and worrying that Johnny might hear him first. And little Liza, she was on my
mind that night too. And Benjie. He’d gone off somewhere in his ute. I hardly closed my eyes that night, then I was out of bed by five-thirty for the cows.’

  ‘But it would have been possible for Mrs Taylor to have returned to the house, between those hours, woken her brother, then returned to her vehicle.’

  ‘She said she was bogged out past the ten-mile. It was a terrible night. No one would have been wandering around in that weather. She said she had to wait until daylight so she could see to get some timber to put under her wheels, to get the car out.’

  ‘But she may have returned without your knowledge.’

  ‘No. I would have heard her come back, for sure. I knew every noise in the old place. I would have thought it was Jack coming back and I would have been out of my bed like a shot.’

  Shot was a bad word, and she wished she hadn’t said it. Poor Jack.

  ‘It isn’t him that you’ve found. You’re wrong,’ she said, but her tears didn’t know it. They were trickling silently now, large green eyes like overflowing pools let the water flow.

  They brought her another glass of water and again showed her the underpants and sock.

  ‘You are not able to identify the clothing, Mrs Burton?’

  ‘No. No, it’s not him you’ve found, officers.’ Her nose was running. She sniffed.

  ‘Can you say with certainty that the items do not belong to your husband?’

  ‘No! I can’t say that! How can I say that? They’re Bonds.’ The last word was a howl.

  The detectives glanced at each other, and she wished she hadn’t said that. Her tongue, like her eyes, was out of control, and these men weren’t giving her time to think of what she should be saying.

  ‘And you have been unable to recall the name of your husband’s dentist?’

  ‘He went to some place in Melbourne.’

  The taller man shook his head and looked at his colleagues.

  ‘Would you recall if he had root canal work done on the left eye tooth, Mrs Burton?’

  ‘What treatment?’

  ‘Root canal.’

  She felt her own eyeteeth with her tongue. ‘He had a lot of work done on one of his eyeteeth. He’d had a terrible toothache for weeks and he wouldn’t go to my dentist.’ She wiped her nose, her mouth. ‘I think they had to drill the nerve out.’

  The city men had enough, and as much as they were going to get from Ellie Burton. They had verification of root canal treatment to one of the eyeteeth, a tentative identification of the garments found at the scene, and three possible suspects. They released Ellie to sob in Bessy’s arms.

  ‘It’s not him. Why would anyone kill him, then bury him in his underpants and one sock, Bessy?’

  Bessy had her own ideas on just who might have done that, but she wasn’t saying anything. Not to Ellie. She’d had a few words with the young girl cop, though. She’d filled her in on some old gossip about Jack and Vera Owen and a tyre lever-toting truckie husband who had sworn to get Jack Burton if it was the last thing he ever did.

  the central hotel

  Tuesday 12 August

  Tuesday awoke grey. Better that it had remained in bed. Soaking rain had begun falling at midnight and by three-thirty, the town mud was deep and red as blood. It stuck. Old umbrellas were found behind doors on Tuesday, dusty umbrellas; the women who carried them to town had little experience with the things that caught the wind and tried to fly. But the women’s shoes, weighted with Mallawindy mud, held them to the earth. This town clung to its few inhabitants. It wouldn’t let them get away.

  Granny Bourke had got away near dawn; she’d slipped over on her way to the outdoor lavatory. There was a ladies and gents behind the bar, but for eighty-odd years Granny had used that old lavatory, and as she frequently sat there for an hour, it was a convenient aberration. That morning she’d slipped in the mud and snapped one of her sparrow ankles. Unconscious, wet and frozen to the bone when found by her grandson, he’d called Jeff Rowan and they’d dropped her off at the Daree hospital. The news was all bad, though it barely caused a ripple in the bar.

  ‘She’s had a good life. She went out the way she would have wanted to go. Independent old bugger,’ Mick said. ‘Oh, by the way, I seen the cops all over Charlie Owen’s place when I was driving back.’

  ‘At the house or where they found Jack?’

  ‘At the house. The place was swarming with cop cars.’

  ‘Poor old Charlie. Why did the crazy bastard bury him right at his own doorstep? That’s what I’d like to know.’

  ‘Because he’s a crazy bastard. When’s your gran’s funeral, Mick?’

  ‘She was still alive when we left her there, but they don’t reckon she’ll live through the day. Frozen to the bone, she was. Wet as a shag. Christ knows how long she’d been out there.’ Mick Bourke’s tone didn’t echo his words. He pulled two beers and pocketed the cash.

  Wet days were boom days at the Central. There was little work that could be done in the rain. By mid-afternoon the bar was full but the conversation hadn’t altered.

  ‘You know, whoever done Jack in, Charlie or not, he done it with a pistol or a small-bore rifle. It went in through the back of his skull and come out through the front of his head. The Sydney cops reckon they must have had him on his knees praying.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Jeff. He told me this morning, on the way back from dropping her off.’

  ‘Dropping who off?’

  ‘Old Gran.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Broke her leg. It will be the end of her, they say.’

  ‘Poor old bugger. Ah well, look on the bright side, Mick – she’s had a good life. Not many of us make the century.’

  ‘Hey, did you hear about Charlie?’

  And others entered with more current news. ‘How about that crazy bastard? I hear they’ve took him in. We’ve had a bloody hit man living in town and didn’t know it. It was a real execution-like hit. Pow, right through the back of the skull.’

  Malcolm Fletcher stood in Jack’s old corner, sipping his double brandy, listening as the growing group rehashed the news.

  ‘So when are you paying up, Mick?’ Joe Willis asked.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Jack.’

  ‘When they identify his corpse, Joe.’ Mick Bourke turned to old Robbie West who had entered to get out of the rain. ‘Did you hear about poor old Charlie?’

  ‘Charged him with Jack’s murder, eh?’ Robbie sneezed, wiped at his nose, then grudgingly passed his coins over with the same hand. Mick scooped them into his till before setting to washing glasses, and his hands.

  ‘I didn’t know that they’d charged him yet. When?’

  Malcolm listened again.

  ‘That’s what I heard, but.’

  ‘Shit! They don’t muck around, do they?’

  ‘They was waiting for him when he got back with his truck. Took three of them to take him, so Vera was tellin’ young Bob. He gived one of them a black eye, dislocated the other copper’s shoulder and half killed the little bloke – so Vera was saying.’

  ‘Got poor old Jack begging on his knees then phitt, a bullet in the back of the head. That’s how they do it on television.’

  ‘Charlie might be a moron but he’s not bloody mad. If he done it, he would have tossed the body on his truck and dumped it in Perth. He wouldn’t of put him so close to home.’ A third voice bought into the conversation.

  And a fourth. ‘That brainless bastard? It’s just what he would do. Everyone in the bar heard him say he was gunna do it one day.’

  ‘If you’re planning to kill some bastard, then you don’t spread it around, do you?’

  ‘I wonder who dobbed him.’

  ‘Christ knows.’ Many eyes looked at neighbours, accused neighbours. Heads turned to scan corners, to glower at Malcolm.

  ‘They got a mob still out there, going over his truck with a fine-tooth comb.’

  ‘He come from Sydney, you know. Bot
h of them did. They reckon Vera was on the game in Kings Cross.’

  ‘She’s still on the bloody game, just that no one pays their bills.’

  Laughter. Raucous. Beer swilled down as conversations overlapped, interlocked. Voices merged, then hushed as new fuel was added, fresh from the street.

  ‘His truck was full of drugs. The cops found a bloody pile of them.’

  ‘Probably moonlighting for the Mafia, drug running. Probably got one of their hit men to do poor old Jack in. They import them, you know. Fly ’em in from some place to do the hit and fly ’em out before anyone knows it’s been done. I guarantee that Charlie has got a watertight alibi. I bet the bastard’s log book will have him in Perth the night it was done.’

  ‘They don’t know the night it was done, do they? How the bloody hell can they tell to the day when he was done in? They can’t. Oh, I hear your old gran carked it, Mick?’

  ‘Broke her ankle and spent half the night out in the rain. Hypothermia and probably pneumonia.’

  ‘Wouldn’t do her much good.’

  ‘No. She had a good life, but.’

  Malcolm left them to it. He waited beneath the other small shelter of the verandah with King Billy and his dogs while the rain slanted down, but the dogs scratched and King Billy cursed him, and every whitey who had ever walked. Malcolm left him cursing and his dogs scratching and he walked into the rain, playing chicken with a Falcon that wasn’t obeying the speed signs. Wheels skidded and the Falcon thunked into a deep open drain. Malcolm proceeded forward, blinded by the rain on his glasses.

  ‘G’day,’ Ben Burton called from his rear counter as Malcolm cleared his vision with a white handkerchief.

  ‘Little good about it, Burton. Any more news?’

  ‘They’ve circulated his X-rays to every dentist in Melbourne. They’ll check his DNA, but that takes time. I’ve got to give them some blood – me or Johnny.’ Ben continued, counting notes to pay into the post office cum bank agency.