A Place With Heart

by Jennie Jones

  Jack didn’t often take chances with people. He’d known too many of the bad variety. Even some you’d never guess would be troublesome or cruel. Those who smiled and seemed the life of the party then bashed their wife, or their kids, or bottled a neighbour in the face. Basically, he trusted no-one until he knew them well. Very well.

  ‘Is Bivic the one holding the poker games?’

  ‘Not sure if he’s running them, but I suspect he’s involved.’

  The man hadn’t had any concerns about this? Unbelievable.

  ‘I don’t know for sure if it is poker,’ Mr Gregory said, sounding a little more circumspect now. ‘It could be something else.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t put much thought into it. I don’t see any issue with the men playing cards and betting a few dollars here and there when they’re off shift.’

  ‘Where do they hold the games?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Gregory said on a surprised exhale of breath, as though he’d never even thought of asking himself the question.

  ‘Well, like you say, it’s probably nothing.’ Jack put a smile in his voice. He didn’t want Gregory to go looking for the poker game. He didn’t want him overly suspicious. ‘We’ll leave them to it. Other than those two on curfew, there’s never much trouble in town from the men at your mine.’

  ‘Good to know!’ Gregory said, sounding relieved. ‘I hope you discover that it is their own electronic equipment after all,’ he added. ‘Although it was quite a haul, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It’s currently looking like it might all be theirs,’ he lied. ‘Haven’t seen Bivic in town much,’ he said casually. ‘Presume he flies back to Perth when he’s off rotation? Or wherever he usually lives?’

  ‘He doesn’t fly out of the area. I believe he stays with his uncle when he’s not living in on site.’

  ‘His uncle?’ If Jack were the jittery sort, this is the moment the jitters might be getting the better of him.

  ‘A goat farmer,’ Gregory said. ‘Arnold Roper.’

  Thirteen

  ‘Trafficking,’ Will said after Jack cut the call to the mine manager. ‘Is that why Kalgirri detectives took over the investigation into where all those iPads and laptops came from? They’re looking into drug trafficking.’

  Jack nodded. ‘Surely you expected that? Coffee?’ he asked, and stood.

  ‘I’d prefer to know what’s going on and why you’re really here,’ Will flung at him as Jack picked up the coffee percolator and poured two mugs.

  If the situation hadn’t been so undetermined, he might have smiled at how quickly Will had picked up on the important aspects of a case he knew nothing about. He was going to bring Will in on the op’s activities, regardless of going directly against orders if he did so, but he had to do it in a roundabout way, and he needed a little more intel first. Christ, he needed to work it all out first—and Will could help him, without knowing he was doing so. This wasn’t just drug trafficking, but so far Jack hadn’t been able to join those dots.

  Why did his gut tell him the animal issues and the graffiti were connected to the drug ring? Roper’s goats. Jax’s fence. Tonto too; how did the beast with the big balls come into this scenario?

  ‘That DUI we sent back to Boondurra,’ he said to Will. ‘I want you to look into the theft of the animals there.’

  ‘Two cats and a ram,’ Will reminded him. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Animals,’ Will said and leaned forwards, arms on his desk.

  ‘Yeah, animals.’ Graffiti, gambling, drugs. Were they linked?

  ‘Am I in on this?’ Will asked. ‘Whatever it is.’

  Jack inhaled but said nothing.

  After a beat, Will flung himself back on his chair. ‘You’re undercover, aren’t you?’

  ‘No way. I’m here for a rest. But don’t say I told you so or I’ll never get that DI promotion.’

  ‘DI promotion my backside. What’s up with this Bivic guy and why weren’t we informed Roper’s nephew had a record?’

  ‘First I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Are you going to pay the Baxter boys a visit now?’

  ‘Not yet. I’m thinking things through.’

  Will pushed his untouched coffee mug to one side, gathered his cap and his keys and stood. ‘Why don’t you have a think about telling me what you’re up to while you’re at it.’ He left the office, throwing a quip over his shoulder, ‘I’ll find out anyway. You know I will.’

  Which was exactly what Jack wanted him to do. Discover it all for himself, officially. All Jack was doing was throwing him clues.

  He sipped his coffee and walked to the barred window, looking out at Tonto. He needed someone at his side, and he didn’t want it to be another detective. For one, it would be obvious and all the nasty felons would go to ground. Secondly, he didn’t want to keep Will out of the loop. He needed backup. He needed someone to know what he knew, because somehow Jax was unknowingly involved and that could put her in serious danger.

  Frances was feeling quite relaxed, sitting with Billy beneath a big gum tree, which gave a lot of good shade. It was much hotter out here than in Geelong and, obviously, there was no sea breeze—not 900 kilometres from the beach.

  It was a quiet place, Solomon’s stables, and she liked the dappled light from between the rustling gum tree leaves, and the neighing of the horses. It sounded like music. She wondered what the horses were saying to each other.

  Billy might know.

  He was sitting with his legs bent and his hands interlocked over his knees. Somehow, sitting down, he looked more like an adult than when he was standing. He didn’t look so skinny. She could see small muscles in his arms. He was really tall, almost as tall as Jack, so perhaps boys didn’t grow into their bodies until they were nearly twenty.

  Frances wondered when she’d grow her boobs. She was half looking forward to it and half not. Most of her ex-friends already had them. Just one more weirdo-Frances thing she had to put up with. Knowing her luck, when she got them they’d be lopsided or one would be bigger than the other. Maybe Auntie Rosie would know how to fix that. Not that she wanted to ask, she was just thinking …

  She plucked a blade of grass from the paddock and put it between her teeth.

  ‘You might not want to do that,’ Billy said, giving her a look. ‘Horses shit on this grass.’

  Frances spat it out fast, her face flaring in embarrassment.

  Billy said nothing and took his focus back to the stable block where he’d just stabled eleven horses.

  Solomon had said hello when they’d arrived, and made her text the mother. Then he’d introduced Frances to some of the horses but she hadn’t touched them and he hadn’t told her to, or asked if she’d like to. That had made her feel less nervous.

  She’d helped Billy shovel horse food into their feed bins. Billy had known exactly what each horse got to eat without even having to look at the notes on a chalkboard. Frances had been impressed.

  ‘How many hours do you work?’ she asked him now.

  ‘Get up at six. Have a few hours off at midday. Then I start work again at three or so, and finish … I dunno. About seven?’

  ‘That’s a long day.’ With very odd hours. ‘Do you have time to visit your friends?’

  ‘Haven’t got many friends now. They’ve gone to Kalgirri or to Perth or wherever. But I couldn’t go cos I had to help my parents on the farm.’

  ‘Were you forced to stay? Did your parents say “there’s no way you’re leaving, you have to stay here and work and that’s that”?’

  Billy picked up a handful of dry gum leaves and crunched them between his fingers. ‘I didn’t actually want to leave.’

  ‘Were you scared?’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’ He gave her a badass look but she thought perhaps he had been a bit frightened to leave home. It was a scary thing to do. She should know.

  ‘She said she was going to visit your mothe
r and take her a cake,’ Frances said. ‘She wants to say sorry for sacking your brothers. She wants me to go.’

  ‘Why do you keep calling Jax she?’

  Frances shrugged. ‘Don’t like her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Because she hates me. It felt like that was a lie, but she must hate her. How could she not? ‘I’ve been forced on her.’

  ‘Just piss off somewhere else.’

  ‘I’ve got nowhere to piss off to. I don’t have any money.’

  ‘I didn’t have any money either until I got myself a proper job.’

  ‘Rosie told me you’d been ordered to take the job with Solomon or you’d go to juvenile jail.’

  ‘And you believed that? You’re so dumb.’

  ‘I’m not dumb.’

  They were silent for a minute while each pondered the dumbness in the other, until Frances didn’t like the quiet any longer. ‘So how long have you worked here?’

  ‘Few months. He wouldn’t let me near the horses to begin with, though. Had me doing all sorts of crap, like cleaning the bathrooms and doing the shopping.’

  He was still doing the grocery shopping. ‘Do you like horses more than you like dogs?’

  Billy shrugged. ‘I’ve got a way with animals. I heard Solomon tell my mum and dad.’

  ‘How often do you see your mum and dad?’

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Don’t talk to ’em much, that’s why not.’

  ‘Don’t they miss you? They love you, don’t they?’

  ‘Yeah but that’s just nothin’.’

  ‘How can it be nothing?’ The hotness of the day crawled over her skin suddenly. ‘Nothing?’ she said again. ‘I have nothing. I wasn’t even wanted.’

  ‘Is anybody wanted?’ Billy asked in a mocking, sing-song tone.

  Outrage came from nowhere, bubbling inside her. ‘Of course they are. When I have a baby, I’m not going to let it out of my sight until it’s at least sixteen.’

  ‘What is your problem, little girl?’

  She let him have it. She couldn’t have held it back if she’d gagged herself. ‘I have a real mother who never wanted me, a step-mother who hates me and a dad who didn’t give two shits about me. He couldn’t have because otherwise he wouldn’t have been so mean to me.’ Her chest was so tight now, she could hardly speak. ‘He wouldn’t have ignored me. He wouldn’t have …’

  ‘Did he hit you?’

  Frances opened her mouth but everything had failed. Her lips were numb and her throat constricted.

  ‘You should have hit him back,’ Billy said.

  Frances shook her head. ‘It wasn’t that.’ He’d never hit her until that day he hadn’t seen her behind him. The day it all started to go wrong. But he’d been in such a furious rage. She’d never seen him like that, ever. He’d hurt her but surely he hadn’t meant to. He hadn’t known she was there. It hadn’t been his fault but she’d been more scared than ever before in her life. She’d never seen men go at each other like that. So speedily, so fast, so angrily. All that shouting and shoving and punching, and the blood on the other man’s face … It made her shake a bit even now, sitting in a quiet paddock with the horses and the gum trees.

  She didn’t know what had been worse—the fight, or all that arguing in the house afterwards, with the police and the ambulance people there, and the neighbours out on the street watching it all. Watching them take Frances into the ambulance. She’d squeezed her eyes closed so tightly all her facial muscles hurt. So embarrassing.

  ‘My grandad used to hit me,’ Billy said. ‘I hit him back when I turned eight. He didn’t do it again. Not much.’

  ‘If I hadn’t been born he might not have done that thing with the girl,’ Frances said.

  ‘What thing with what girl? Do you mean your dad?’

  She shook her head again, trying to clear the thoughts, but she couldn’t shut them out. If her dad had really liked her, he wouldn’t have been at work late so much, would he? If she’d been pretty, like Auntie Rosie and even like the real mother, he might have wanted to take her out to the movies, just him and her, and not be out all the time with other women. He’d said it was Linda’s fault he found friendships with other women, and Linda had said it was Frances’s fault and that she was tied to the house looking after his kid.

  Or he might have been more interested in coming to school to watch her on sports day—she was good at sports. But he didn’t know that; how could he? He never saw, he only heard about it from Linda. Had he known that Linda had never liked her? That Linda took it all out on Frances, that poor Linda had been duped into taking the baby and that she’d regretted it every day of her life …

  Her chest now hurt so bad it was like someone had punched her with a brick. Her eyes stung like she’d had sand thrown in them. And Billy wasn’t a badass. He was a stupid ass. Like a donkey.

  ‘You’ve got two real parents still living together,’ she told him. ‘You’re totally stupid, Billy. I’ve never met such a stupid person.’ She pushed from the ground to stand, nerve ends firing as she peered down at him. ‘Get a life,’ she pronounced, full of disdain, the way she’d heard it said on television shows by adults, then she turned and bumped straight into Solomon.

  He steadied her before she tripped over his big booted feet, but she’d already lost her courage. It rushed out of her like water drained from a colander.

  She stepped back, furious with herself, and turned from him, then didn’t know what to do. Move off as planned? Or stay and brave whatever he was going to say to her.

  ‘Billy,’ he said in his strange quiet tone.

  Billy threw his hands up into the air. ‘I haven’t done nothing.’

  ‘Nothing is what you’re definitely doing. How about you go get the chaff.’

  It wasn’t a question, it was an order, even though he’d said it softly. Maybe he was also a Billy-whisperer because the badass noob dragged himself up and wandered off pretty quickly—not a run because badass noobs didn’t run for anyone—and headed for the work ute. He’d told her he usually only drove his own car when he was on his own time, which he was happy about because petrol was so expensive and he’d complained about having to pick her up in his own car while Solomon used the work ute for taking hay out to the far paddocks.

  She tried hard to stop her legs from shaking. She glanced around. Once Billy left she’d be alone with Solomon. ‘I was angry at him,’ she said, explaining her reason for raising her voice, in case he was going to tell her off. She didn’t fancy getting an adult-talk from this man. She couldn’t lie either. He’d know. He made her feel like he didn’t care that she was only thirteen but that he did care about how she showed herself to the world.

  Not that Mt bullshit Maria was anything more than a grain of salt in the world … But he did make her feel grown up, and she wasn’t used to being a teenager let alone a fully-fledged adult. She had years and years to get used to growing up. She just hoped she could persuade the mother to send her to boarding school so she could practise growing up without being stared at all the time by everyone in Mt bullshit Maria.

  ‘I reckon he loves his parents,’ Solomon said, casting a glance at the ute Billy was now driving down the track towards the gate. ‘He just can’t find a way to let them know that yet.’

  Frances didn’t know what to say. Was he being kind about Billy?

  Solomon smiled. ‘You’ve got a lot going on, haven’t you? Want to take a break?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything. I don’t need a break.’

  ‘I think you do. Let’s go polish some bridles. We can be silent companionably, then when Billy gets back, he can drive you home.’

  He headed off across the paddock but Frances stayed put. She couldn’t run off, she didn’t even remember the way back to the farmhouse. So what was she going to do? ‘I don’t actually have a home,’ she mumbled bitterly at Solomon’s back, as she eventually moved to follow him, but not so loud that he’d hea
r her.

  Her stupid Auntie Rosie’s voice filled her head suddenly. ‘Come on, tortoise.’

  Auntie Rosie wouldn’t care if nobody liked her. She’d laugh. How did people do that? How did they make sure they didn’t get hurt all the time?

  She kept her eyes on the grass as she walked behind Solomon. She ought not to have shouted at Billy. He was sad in some ways, even if he didn’t know it. And he had mean brothers. He probably needed a friend. But why had she said all that about her dad? Solomon had heard it all. She could kick herself. She ought to throw herself under a horse or something and get it to kick her in the head so that she was in a coma forevermore and wouldn’t have to think about it all. You didn’t think when you were in a coma, did you? Knowing her luck, you did.

  Jack kept his focus forwards as he walked through the gate and up the driveway track to Solomon’s stables. Billy had just slammed the boot of his car on the opposite side of the track and scarpered over to one of Solomon’s work utes.

  Frances was there, and he remembered what Donna had told him about her visiting today.

  ‘Hello, Frances. How’s it going?’

  She gave him a half-smile.

  ‘Jack,’ he reminded her. ‘Sergeant Jack, if you like,’ he amended.

  ‘Hello, Jack.’

  Well, colour him surprised.

  ‘I hope you’re not driving,’ he said with a teasing frown, indicating the work ute.

  She blushed a little, obviously unsure if he meant it.

  ‘I’m joking,’ he clarified. He didn’t know what or who had hurt her but she appeared to be a little more at ease today. Maybe she’d found a friend in Billy.

  He gave Billy a once-over. He’d grown in the last three months and was a tall, sinewy young man. He still looked like a fifteen-year-old but Jack could see young muscle there. He was currently scrawny, but Billy would fill out.

  ‘How’s the vehicle?’ Jack asked him, tipping his head towards Billy’s personal car.

  ‘Registered until April. Don’t take any notice of the duct tape on the petrol cap. It’s totally secure.’